


Lain Low

by pherede



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, But Happy Endings Aren't Cheap, Character Death, Complex Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, Elven Sexuality Is Weird As Fuck, Happy Ending, M/M, Master/Slave, Politics, Public Sex, Rape Equals Death, Sexualized Torture, Subverted Tropes, Suicidal Ideation, Torture, Unrequited Love, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:35:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 22
Words: 98,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pherede/pseuds/pherede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mirkwood has fallen, and the Necromancer (they say) has found something he once lost, and orcs and darker things are crawling..." </p><p>The world labors under the growing might of Sauron, and as Erebor struggles to survive, Thorin is caught between his nephews' machinations, his political alliances and rivalries, and his new prisoner-- the fallen Elvenking Thranduil, whose beauty has been the subject of Thorin's twisted obsession for a century. Will Thorin use his new plaything as a lever against his opponents, or will he break Thranduil's will and despoil him in vengeance? And is there perhaps a third way, a path back toward the light in this broken and befouled Middle-Earth?</p><p>This very dark AU story contains intense themes and sexual material, but is not intended to be solely pornographic. Lore and speculation, extensive character development, broad thematic scope, and an emotional roller-coaster of internal and external conflict.</p><p>Now with a bonus ACTUALLY HAPPY ENDING! A whole new chapter to soothe the brutality!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

He has heard rumors, the whispers of stories. Mirkwood has fallen, and the Necromancer (they say) has found something he once lost, and orcs and darker things are crawling through every acre of land between the Misty Mountains and the Iron Hills. Rumor says that some great elf-enchantress has been drive from her grove, and now rests in Rivendell; rumor says that blond horsemen with fell faces have been sweeping up from the south, and dealing with the dark power at Dol Goldur under the leadership of their decrepit king.

 

For Thorin, King Under the Mountain, this matters only where it affects his own people. The dwarves are for the dwarves, and he is the lord of them, now that Dáin is dead. The gold of Erebor grows, and its people multiply by birth and by migration, until his grandfather’s dragon-luring hoard is dimmed in its glory and the kingdom thrives in splendor.

 

And yet, despite the memories of exile and fire, the people of Erebor do not fear for their wealth. They celebrate a month after Durin’s Day, the anniversary of Thorin’s re-emergence from the Mountain; young dwarves compete in boxing, and mothers tell their dwarflings of Thorin’s Blow and how the wicked Smaug fled to the Misty Mountains before the mighty fist of their king. No dark thing dares approach, they crow, while Thorin is their king.

 

But dark things do move in the world; and dark things whisper in Thorin's heart, rumor and suspicion. While Erebor thrives, plowing and terracing its slopes to supply its own bread, other nations are beset by war, by marauding orcs, and by the growing influence of the Necromancer himself.

 

Yet in this growing dark, with Erebor proudly isolated from the world, there are a few things Thorin will not stand, the chiefest of these being dwarves enslaved to orcs; so when the slave-drivers come, Thorin sends his unruly nephews out to hinder them, and to bring home the lost children of Mahal whenever they are found.

 

Most of these caravans are populated with men and elves, and they will die quickly, Thorin knows; no use to waste his strength upon them, who will not give him aid even if they live, and who will not suffer long. But dwarves were made to endure, and they are precious to this Necromancer with his machines and strip-mines, which must be run in the dark and deep places, reeking with foul vapors, filthy and loud; and dwarves can endure them.

 

And if this gives his nephews something to do, to placate their unrest and their growing ill-temper, it is only a secondary blessing. Most of all Thorin wants them to see—these loud brash dwarves that his lads have become, with their strange foreign friends and their gold-heavy eyes—what an alliance with the Necromancer would become.

 

For the Necromancer has sent envoys, oh yes he has, promising safety from the coming war, promising tools and engines that plow the earth more efficiently than the knowledge of dwarves, promising bushel-baskets of sapphires and cities made of gold, even greater wealth than Erebor has yet known. And Thorin has seen his nephews' faces, and recognized the ancestral gold-madness there; so it is for the best, that Fili and Kili learn who are the true foes of Erebor.

 

Now they stand before him, dark triumph glittering in their eyes, and besides their rescued kin they have taken one more, an elf in chains and hooded with a rough sack, as if they bring him to the headsman instead of to their uncle's throne. White-gold hair falls from beneath the filthy cloth, and Thorin's mouth goes dry.

 

"We've brought you a gift," says Fili, smirking. "Almost left him, but Kili recognized his face."

 

"What have you done," says Thorin, hoarse, fearing that what he sees in the next few moments will destroy him. Kili laughs and pulls off the hood, and Thorin’s fears take wing: it is Thranduil himself, the Elvenking whose lands were the first taken by the Necromancer, kneeling chained and filthy at the foot of his throne. His face is thin, but still beautiful; he is draped in rags, and still seemingly more haughty than any king.

 

Old familiar rage uncurls in Thorin's chest like a dragon awakened upon its hoard, and his worry for the souls of his sister-sons vanishes in a tide of greed and punishing rage and half-forgotten sorrow. He is off his throne in a heartbeat, and he nods voiceless to the lads as he seizes the chains that bind Thranduil’s arms, hauling the elvenking upright.

 

“A fitting gift,” says Thorin with a shaking voice, “and one I shall enjoy.” He descends from his dais, and takes Thranduil’s chin in his fingers, lifting his face to be examined. It is truly him, though smeared with filth and withdrawn behind his mask-like face. Kili whispers in his brother’s ear, and Fili mutters to his uncle: “Mind he doesn’t enchant you.”

 

Thorin fixes his nephew with a black look and stands straight to address the court. “I adjourn you,” he says, ignoring the whispers and murmurs about the room, and pulls Thranduil upright by the chains that bind him, leading him from before the throne while Balin clears his throat and invites unfinished business to be dealt with at the next court, or by council members, as appropriate.

 

Thorin has never ended an audience so abruptly, but then he has never coveted anything so urgently nor so long, not gold nor throne nor Arkenstone. Thranduil follows him with chin raised, but more than once he stumbles, and Thorin begins to understand that his captivity has been long and his privation extreme, and his haughtiness is a show.

 

Thorin has imagined this before.

 

Once, young and blind with the confidence of royalty, he stood beside his grandfather’s throne and greeted the envoy of Mirkwood, proud of his powerful stature and his princely demeanor, and found his heart racing and felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth as the Elvenking pulled back his hood. Thranduil had been so strange, so lovely, in the light of the Arkenstone’s glow. His smooth face and tall thin frame were nothing that Thorin had expected, nor that any dwarf might naturally find beautiful, but despite his peaceful appearance there had been a battle-light about him. His skin and hair put Thorin’s mind on moonstones and silver, where once they had preferred to linger on bronze and jet; and as Thranduil debated with the great dwarves of the Mountain, Thorin thought of the tales he had heard, of how the Elvenking had fought in great battles and slain terrible foes and finally retreated within his borders to shut out the world and lead his own folk in peace.

 

Thorin laughs to think of it now, how he had admired his foe. It seemed to him a great and noble thing, at the time, to reign from within a cavern and treat only rarely with the surface world. He had longed in his youth for adventure and romance, for war and dominion, and at the end of it long years of lauded comfort on a throne that gave no thought to men or elves. The dangerous air of Thranduil’s calm had inflamed him; the strange beauty of his eyes had wormed its way into Thorin’s thoughts for many months, and after that his admiration had only crystallized into a deep and smoldering hope.

 

In the next meeting, years later, Thranduil’s eyes had met his own, and the smoking ember in his breast had become a flame that threatened to consume him. In his boldness, he sought audience with the Elvenking before his departure, and exchanged some meaningless diplomatic pleasantries with only the slightest catch in his throat, and received for his courtesy the incline of that graceful head and what was almost, in Thorin’s memory, a smile.

 

Thrain had cornered him after that and warned him of the Elvenking’s treachery, though little did he know how strangely his son’s attentions had become warped, nor how deep the vein of lust could run.

 

“Remember, my lad, that he is older than many nations, older than many of our own delvings,” Thrain had said, clasping him by the shoulder. “He is not an equal; he is a sorcerous creature, a force like a landslide, and we deal with him at our peril. He does not take comrades, Thorin, nor ally for love or loyalty; he sees what is useful, and he uses it. Never forget it, or he will use you too.”

 

Like a landslide, Thorin had repeated to himself. Like a force of nature, beyond alliance or compulsion. It had eaten into him for years, and the rest of the warning had slipped from his mind.

 

Only to be recalled, when Erebor burned and Thranduil turned his back. Only to be remembered in bitterness and hatred, as Mirkwood turned its back and the survivors of Erebor starved. Only to fester into spite beyond bearing, in the years since Thorin’s Company had fled ravening Mirkwood, slaughtered by orcs and spiders, only a few of them escaping without a single arrow’s help from Thranduil and his kin.

 

He supposes now that Thranduil must have been caught in his own battle. Surely it was only poor luck that led their company into Mirkwood at the moment the Necromancer gained sudden awful power; certainly Thranduil’s folk had been routed, destroyed, and driven from their home. Until now Thorin has thought their king perished, or under torture unending in Dol Goldur, and clung to the thought as a solace when the old hatred crept up in his throat.

 

If there is one awful gift in all the turmoil of the outside world, one dark delight that makes Thranduil’s capture a sublime opportunity, it is that the Necromancer has been quite open about the fates of his foes. Everyone from the beleaguered city of Minas Tirith to the filthiest ditches in the wilderness of Rhun knows how elves are best tortured, and what torments they most fear.

 

Old scrolls and tomes agree, as do the desecrated corpses of elves sent by the Necromancer (with jewels in their mouths and… other orifices, honey to sweeten the stick) as warnings against hospitality for his enemies. Sexual violation is a thing of dread and revulsion to all thinking creatures, but to elves there is extended some twisted mercy, some bizarre bodily process, by which that violation cascades into shock like that of blood loss—weakness, pallor, coldness in the limbs, shallow gasping breaths—and is just as fatal, without fail.

 

The ever-courteous notes that come with the bodies explain that, as with blood loss, the weak are more susceptible, and that even the strong may learn to withstand more awful violations with care and long exposure, though none have yet withstood unwanted orgasm nor any sort of major penetration. The texts are nearly scientific, though Thorin has no stomach to examine the bodies; for it is not Thranduil’s death he longs for, and if deep in his heart some more innocent self is protesting, he knows—he is sure he knows—exactly how far he can push and still keep his revenge.

 

* * *

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

In the safety of his chambers, Thorin orders a bath drawn, and clean clothing and bandages brought, and ointment and bread, and after that privacy, to tend to his foe. His servants obey with curious eyes, though the oldest of them give knowing glances to Thranduil where he stands silent and swaying in his chains.

 

Thorin keeps chambers that are, by dwarven standards, both austere (a high slanted ceiling with a single light-shaft is the only gesture of vastness) and indulgent (a huge fireplace sheds light and warmth on soft cushions and rugs, deep upholstered chairs, and a broad bed under piles of coverlets). A small library adjoins his bedroom, filled with tomes and scrolls copied by careful dwarven scribes, the wealth of Erebor which the rest of the world thought lost; other than this, Thorin’s chambers are scarcely decorated at all. He had them outfitted within the first few months of his rule, and he has changed very little since; when he is not bearing the burdens of rule, he craves isolation and simplicity.

 

Now, with Thranduil here, Thorin wishes he had gilded the whole thing, and piled gemstones in the corners, to show his new _guest_ how wealthy his kingdom is, how high he has risen while Mirkwood lies in ruins.

 

No matter. A deposed king is ornament enough.

 

When the servants have finished their duties and gone to retrieve food, he takes up a hammer, pins Thranduil’s hands to the wall with one of his own, and strikes the chains from Thranduil's wrists. They give way so easily that Thorin wonders how they held Thranduil prisoner at all, rusted and pitted as they are, typical orc equipment. Thranduil flinches at the first strike and nearly falls, and Thorin understands that Thranduil is even weaker than he had first seen.

 

He must be standing by sheer force of will, but Thranduil withstands Thorin’s brusque touch, eyes fixed on the far wall, nostrils flared and mouth pressed tightly closed. The rags he is wearing rip away easily under Thorin’s strong hands.

 

His flesh as Thorin reveals it is marred with whip-marks fresh and old, streaked with blood and orc-filth. Nausea tightens Thorin's throat at the sight.  


Has he not exulted to think of Thranduil under torture for his crimes of arrogance? Was there truly a time in the sweet distant days of Thror's rule that he stood by his father's throne and felt his heart ache with strange songs at the sight of Thranduil's beauty? These days are buried now in the graves of his kin; to him Thranduil is no more than the implacable figure elk-stride, turning away, closing his borders to all who begged him for shelter. Is he not to have the satisfaction of his revenge?  


But it is so easy, as Thranduil lowers himself into the bath with Thorin’s hand heavy on his arm, his skin white and silken between its marks, to pretend that the outrage Thorin feels at the sight of these wounds is still directed toward his old foe. Easier to let Thranduil take the blame for his own hurts—if he had not been so prideful, so isolated, would he not have found more allies for his protection?—and to congratulate himself, that the wounds he means to inflict are less barbaric and will cut much deeper.

 

He makes up his mind, and now in his mind he is not, has never been, the lad who longed for this hand's touch, for this mouth's caress. If he is forceful in his scrubbing, if he ignores the hiss of anguish as the water pours slightly too hot, this helps him to believe it—he is not washing Thranduil for his own good, but so that Thorin will not need to touch orc-filth and dried blood to take his hateful pleasure in Thranduil's body.  


There is a dry white film across half of Thranduil's face, and crusted into his hair, and Thorin touches it, puzzled. Thranduil speaks: "I have already tasted the hospitality of Durin," he says, and shudders. “Your nephews—they painted me. They taunted me, that is all.” The words, however defiant, strangle in his throat as shivers rack him.  


"They said this was to be your fate at my hands," murmurs Thorin, and Thranduil shies from his touch convulsively, curling against the side of the copper tub. Ill-used he has certainly been, to lose his nerve and dignity so completely; and Thorin washes away the dried spend of his nephews' disrespect with a steady hand, soap-suds foaming in the hair of his thick forearms, while Thranduil lies silent and shivering in the hot water beneath his ministrations.  


"My nephews are mistaken," says Thorin at last, when he can speak. "I want a good deal more from you than a few seconds' pleasure and a swift unpleasant death."  


Thranduil pulls himself upright in the tub, with grave difficulty, and hope spreads across his face. "Surely you, whose people have used me as harshly as orcs, do not mean to treat me with honor," he spits, and Thorin sees the old fire and pride come back into his expression.  


Yes, this is how Thorin has imagined his enemy, reduced in circumstance but still haughty and fighting, and his voice is dark when he replies: "On the contrary, Thranduil, I mean to make you beg before you die." And he pours the last of the wash-tub over Thranduil's hair, and drags him from the bath sputtering.

 

“Take your hands off me,” chokes Thranduil, and Thorin feels his blood rise to the impotent venom in his captive’s voice. Better for Thranduil to speak in pride and then be broken, to remind Thorin of his own reasons for vengeance, and Thranduil obliges him even as Thorin drags him toward the bed. “If you mean to kill me,” Thranduil says, “then put a dagger in my heart and have done with it. I will not beg for death.” Panic rises in his voice as Thorin pushes him down upon the broad bed of furs and linen.

 

“You will beg for more than death,” Thorin threatens him,  watching how his captive twists to push away from him, letting himself exult in the white vulnerability of Thranduil’s nakedness—so different from his own body, which is broad and stout and strong in chest and torso, and dark with hair besides. “I will have you in every way I like," Thorin adds, “however it pleases me, and it will please me to see you aroused by my touch.”

 

“Are you _mad_ ,” says Thranduil, the whites of his eyes exposed in horror, drawn back against the wall with his knees pulled up to cover his nakedness. “Are you Naugrim now filthier than orcs, to rape your prisoners to death?”

 

"Even orcs remember their allies when they are lain low,” Thorin snarls. “Not so the elves of Mirkwood. My people starved and suffered, and you turned your back; now I will have my satisfaction, and it is nothing more than you deserve.”

 

Thranduil averts his face, breathing heavily, and Thorin sees his jaw clench and grind, sees how terror grows and blossoms in his body. “I will die,” he says at last, as though reassuring himself. “I will die quickly enough, and be beyond your reach.” His voice is low, shaking, and rushed; Thorin lets him seek refuge from his fear in the certainty of death, savoring his enemy’s despair.

 

“No easy death, from what I have read," says Thorin, advancing upon the bed, though he keeps himself at angles to his prey, so as not to frighten him into bolting. "First the violation, the struggle-- and you are weak, it would be no great labor to restrain you-- and the pain of tearing flesh, no pleasure at all for you; and then pallor, shivering cold, shallow breaths and heartbeat slowed to silence, and death in shock and dread before your body has ceased to twitch around the torment of penetration.” Thranduil closes his eyes tight, and his mouth opens a little as his breathing hastens in his dread. Thorin pauses, and continues: “If I meant to kill you, I would do as you say, and put a dagger in your heart. But I want more; I want to see you stripped of your pride, as I was once, and made into my pet, and I will not be deprived of my prey, you understand..."

 

Here he settles himself upon the bed and, reaching out one hand, strokes Thranduil’s knee (white, stark, the muscle thinned with long captivity), and he tells himself that the compassion in his voice is a mask he wears, though what lies behind the mask he will not allow himself to imagine for a moment. “It is no way for even the lowest beast to die,” he murmurs, voice low and sweet, “nor should you imagine for a moment that you will be raped while you are under my hospitality. If my nephews touch you, they will be punished harshly; if anyone sets their hand to you—“

  
  
“Except you,” says Thranduil, his sides heaving like a rabbit in the snare.

  
  
“You are under my protection,” says Thorin. “You are  _mine_.”

  
  
And though Thranduil flinches from him, though the weight of Thorin’s fingers seems too heavy for those long bones to bear, Thorin keeps his hand upon his captive’s thigh, warm steady fingertips and palms, as one soothes a skittish colt.

  
  
“You will learn to submit to my hands,” says Thorin. “The day is coming when I shall touch you as I please, and the touch please you.”

  
  
Thranduil turns his face away, wet silver tresses sticking to his shoulders; and Thorin’s servants return with bread and soft white cheese and a jar of preserved summer fruit, then depart without a word, their eyes only flickering to the tight pale figure of Thranduil for a moment. Kings of Erebor have taken concubines in war time out of mind, and doubtless the elder servants have instructed the younger—soon it will be a thing of normalcy, the king’s captive in his chambers and at his side, like any other spoil of victory.

 

At first Thorin expects absolute resistance from Thranduil, defiance or passive refusal in even the simplest of things, but once he breaks the loaf of bread and opens the jar, the scent of food fills the chamber and Thranduil turns his head, hopeful but afraid.

 

Thorin feeds him, cheese smeared on bread, still hot from the oven and cool from the larder; he does not permit Thranduil to take the food in his own hands, instead making Thranduil crane his neck to have each bite placed between his lips. Thranduil, for his part, offers only a token resistance, and Thorin knows that his depredations have been great indeed, and knows from long experience of war how precious is wholesome food after a time of starvation; and when he gives Thranduil the preserved fruit, Thranduil moans as he tastes it, and before he can stop himself he licks the last traces of syrup from Thorin’s thumb.

  
  
The touch of that tongue feels like blood-spattered triumph; Thorin’s nostrils flare and his chest rises, and sick horror spreads across Thranduil’s face, followed by a deep flush. Humiliation, realization of his own helplessness, hunger for what is offered and loathing for the ease with which he accepts it—these things flicker in Thranduil’s expression, and Thorin devours them all in turn with his eyes.

  
  
“Eat,” says Thorin, and Thranduil seems to weigh his own starvation and the chance to delay whatever comes next against the humiliation of eating bread and cheese from the hands of his dark-eyed captor. Then he opens his mouth, and with downcast eyes he takes every morsel given to him, neat white teeth and bruised, split lips not touching Thorin’s fingers any more than strictly necessary; and even still Thorin wants to press his thumb into the cracks where Thranduil’s lip has bled, to see him wince, to know that something he does will make Thranduil react.

  
  
He is beginning to suspect that nothing will ever be enough.

 

When the food is gone, Thranduil slumps down onto the furs, hair spreading out around him; and Thorin straightens, knowing that he has other duties to attend, but not wishing to leave Thranduil alone in his chambers. Nor does he trust any watchers, not now that he has seen bruises, not now that he has washed away his nephews’ slime; so he binds Thranduil at the wrists and ankles, naked and undraped, and leaves him lying upon his bed—eyes open and blank, brows drawn together in a shadow of remembered pain, arms pressed back against too-stark ribs and bound at the buttocks with thin ropes—to be dealt with when he returns.

 

* * *

 

 

The following days are scheduled with many councils and appointments, but Thorin has no stomach for them now, craving only time to spend with his new toy. Thorin has advisors, councilmen, reeves and justiciars; he needs the next few days for his own goals, and they will manage the kingdom’s affairs well enough if he bids them, at least for a time. Thorin will not leave his duties to their care for long, he decides, but surely no harm will be done by a mere week of absence.

Thorin summons his most trusted advisors and his closest kin, and within the hour they are meeting in his private council chamber, discussing this new turn of events. Dain’s greybeards, ever quick to make demands on him (Thorin suspects they mean to race him to the most obvious or necessary course of action, and lend themselves the appearance of commanding their king), insist that this new hostage is best used as a trade object.

 

Some propose that he be delivered to the Necromancer, as a gesture of benevolent regard to offset a message of rejection. After all, the Necromancer has thoroughly demonstrated his hunger for elves, and he certainly carried a grudge against Mirkwood, to have razed it with such venom—trees laid waste and undergrowth stripped, caverns filled with orc-spawn and vast tracts scalped to strip the earth of its wealth, and between the strip-mines deep adits piercing the earth to its heart.

 

Some even whisper that Thranduil might be offered to the Necromancer in terms of truce and alliance. Thorin resists the urge to spit. Already it is burden enough, that his kingdom may not keep to itself and ignore the squabblings of other races; already he scowls to think of making more allies, when allies demand so much and return so little. Thranduil himself is proof of this folly.

 

Kili leans forward, testing his elbows against the table; he has been more eager to speak of late, and Thorin encourages him, suspecting that Kili’s mischief rises from idleness. Fili has been trained for many years to succeed Thorin, and Kili has been left largely to his own devices, making alliances, training with the arms-masters, and learning whatever skills he will. Perhaps, with statecraft added to the mix, Kili will finally grow beyond the wickedness that flickers in his eyes.

 

He is not truly corrupted, Thorin is sure, despite the sick jealous rage he feels when he remembers Thranduil’s debasement. He would never do harm to another dwarf; he would never raise a violent hand to a real _person_.

 

“May we not use him as a hostage,” asks Kili, raising his eyebrows. “Where there is a king, there must be a kingdom; surely there are enough survivors of Mirkwood to have a bit of gold, or a brace of archers, laid by.”

“Nonsense,” says one of the greybeards. “Mirkwood is scattered, and its wealth dissipated. Why should we give them such a valuable gift for a few bits of carved leather and wood?”

 

“We needn’t give them _all_ of him,” protests Kili. “A few fingers, perhaps. An ear? Nothing to disfigure him—it would be a shame to ruin something that beautiful—but if they have anything worth taking, we might have it all for the asking.”

 

Balin, who has not spoken for the entire council’s duration, raises an eyebrow. “I had not figured you for a lover of elven beauty,” he says, with a sardonic tone that turns his words into a rebuke.

 

Thorin has heard him remark often enough on Kili’s small cruelties, and has no desire to revisit the subject, so he cuts them both off: “There is no Mirkwood settlement to my knowledge,” he says, placing his palms on the table to signal for their silence. “There are no rulers, no dignitaries—who will we treat with? Nor will I offer anything to the Necromancer that he craves, not willingly at least. Thranduil is mine, my concubine of war. Let this be the end of it.”

 

They do not like it; but they do not have to like it. Thorin is their king.

 

After a brief silence, the topic turns to Rohan, whose fell horsemen have allied with the Necromancer. They have sent word that they wish to parley, to form an alliance that need not be—in name at least—a bond to the Necromancer himself.

 

“Allies and bedfellows,” Thorin denounces. “Have we no independence? Rohan lies at the Necromancer’s feet like a dog, and dares not roll over without permission. Have we nothing to discuss besides how best to sell our flesh? Do you think I have no more pressing thoughts than those of horses? Decide among yourselves; I want no part of it.”

 

He wants to leave them to it, their arguing and backbiting, and go back to his own chambers, where Thranduil waits in bonds. The thought of it makes him shiver, and he wanders for a moment into a dream while his council debates Rohan’s offer.

 

He does not quite miss the looks his advisors give him, the whispers around the table; but time enough to deal with them later, when he is not so exhausted by the weight in his mind.

  
Fili is saying something, his voice filled with fire, his fist pounding the table like a war-drum between his phrases. He wants the spears and lances of the Rohirrim, and the gold of their beards to trade on the field of battle for the gold of Gondor, which might yet fall if caught between the hammer of Mordor and the anvil of Rohan—and why should the dwarves be excluded from the wealth of its inevitable fall?

  
  
Kili wants nothing to do with them. Men, he says, are not to be trusted in anything, short-lived vermin that they are. If Gondor must fall and be looted, Rohan in its turn will be weakened, and why should the dwarves risk their own heads now and share the loot with sweating men and come at last to be the slaves of the Necromancer himself? Could they not simply let Rohan break its own back, then strip Meduseld of its ill-gained glory at their own leisure?  


For his part, having vented his impatience, Thorin listens through a fog. He is, briefly, glad that one nephew distrusts the old Enemy so thoroughly; but his mind returns ever to the pale thin throat and flickering empty eyes of his prey.  


He should want to destroy, defile, profane; but his target escapes so easily behind his vacant gaze, so simply slips away into a silent space he cannot reach, and the need to hurt has turned into the need to _possess_. It sustains him when he overhears the word _bewitched_ from one of his reeves, and draws a dark chuckle from his throat: if he were enchanted, would he hunger so much for Thranduil’s debasement?


	3. Chapter 3

Thorin does not recall the ending of council, nor quite exactly how he returned to his rooms, but there on his bed lies Thranduil, unmoved, his white spill of hair now perfectly dry beneath him. He has not struggled for freedom in Thorin’s absence—indeed, Thorin wonders if perhaps he did not bind his captive tightly enough, for Thranduil to lie so easily in bonds.

 

Then Thranduil groans, and rolls over, and Thorin sees the way the muscle and bone of his shoulder are tested and stressed by the bindings; and with a sigh Thorin sets down the platter of meat and stewed fruit and soft bread that he has carried from the great hall, and sets to unbinding his captive.

 

Thranduil awakes as he works, and after a moment's horrified start, he turns his face into the furs and lies motionless, letting Thorin do what he will. Unbound, he does not sit upright; rather, he flinches as Thorin tears a strip from his own surcoat—charcoal silk, undecorated—and wraps it several times around Thranduil's wrist, then ties it off.

 

"This is only to remind you," says Thorin, "that even if you wished to run, you would not run far before I caught you; and that you have nothing worth running for, not outside among the orcs and outlaws. As my captive—as my _slave_ —you are safe, and none shall harm you."

 

"So I shall never see the stars again," whispers Thranduil. "I think I would rather die exposed upon the withered heath than to fade slowly here in the dark."

 

"I see no dark," says Thorin, gesturing at the room: his torches, his fireplace, the candles that contribute their endless flicker.

 

Thranduil does not respond, and finally Thorin commands him to sit up and prepare himself to eat, while Thorin removes his own garments, leather and rivets and rich cloth, an imitation of warrior’s garb made fit for a king. Thranduil rights himself slowly, watching Thorin strip with a visible flinch at the fall of each article of armor and clothing; and when Thorin is at last naked, and sets to bathing himself in the herb-water basin by the fireside, he is rewarded with a burning edge of red that creeps up Thranduil’s throat and forces his gaze onto the platter of food as if he does not hunger for food at all.

 

The water is cold despite the fire, but Thorin can scarcely feel it; his skin is on fire, his body seems pierced with needles. He entertains the thought of taking Thranduil by force, but the image in his head is one of Thranduil willing and wanton, and he knows that no force will earn him that reaction, and he wants no dead plaything growing ashen in his bed.

 

But he hopes—oh, yes, he hopes, and when he turns and sees Thranduil avert his eyes with high color on his cheeks, the surge of desperation chokes the words out of him. He lies to himself, for a moment: he tells himself that Thranduil wants him, that the flush in his cheeks is a bride’s shyness, that when he touches Thranduil’s shoulder with his fingertips his captive’s lips will part and his eyes will turn up with some faint indication of want—

 

But when he returns to the bedside and his fingers depress that white flesh there is no gasp of betrayed desire, only a shudder that could mean nausea as easily as lust, and Thranduil jerks away from him helplessly as if Thorin has laid a knife to his skin. He can touch this; he cannot have this. All his body and skin for nothing, all his worship and hope…

 

He realizes that he has said to himself, _worship,_ and suddenly he no longer wants to touch. If there is one thing he cannot feel for this creature at his mercy, for this tyrant who watched his people die, it is the worship of a young prince for a beautiful king; he has spent so long hating. He was a fool, a child, and his father was wise. He climbs into his bed without touching Thranduil again, and lies on his back arrayed in furs, only speaking to direct Thranduil to sleep at his feet (like a dog, like a beast already tamed).

 

Thorin is no stranger to sleepless nights, but this is more than the dull frustration of insomnia. He is _awake_ , as he has not been for months, feeling the pressure of Thranduil’s too-thin shoulderblades against his ankle. Did he tell his captive to sleep like this, touching him?

 

Do elves sleep?

 

Nor can Thorin escape the fire in his bones, even if his mind is in turmoil; he is holding his foot very still, fearing any movement, or the intimacy of skin moving across skin even if it is only a thin layer of touch between bones. Each time Thranduil breathes—slower than Thorin’s breathing, the ancient calm rhythm of elvendom—there is some slight drag of touch, and finally Thorin can no longer hold himself paralyzed: his foot twitches, his toes move.

 

Nearly a caress. Certainly nothing so weak, nothing indulgent, not when his captive has yet to provide him with anything of worth; but is this not fitting, for the king to pet his slave with his foot? It tastes like an excuse; but Thorin is full to sickness with self-awareness, and he puts this unsettling doubt aside, and the flat of the top of his foot strokes Thranduil’s back in a slow straight line, a gesture of comfort.

 

Again; he cannot imagine that Thranduil _wants_ this touch, but Thorin needs it, and the tremor against his skin feeds his soul in a way that no imagined ravishment has achieved. His hands clench into fists, wanting to follow the lines of prominent spine and wasted muscle that his foot can only imply, wanting to hear Thranduil’s breathing calm.

 

There is a broken sound in the dimming firelight, in the high-ceilinged dark; there is a heave beneath Thorin’s foot, a choked sob followed by terrified stillness, as if Thranduil is hiding from a hunter and has betrayed himself as prey.

 

Thorin knows, for a moment’s breadth before he can hush himself again, how much more cruel is kindness than even cruelty itself; he has been an exile far from home, and he too has wept at an ill-timed touch, tricked into believing himself safe after long sorrow. He feels Thranduil curl tighter, and knows that his new slave is clutching his knees, and can nearly picture Thranduil’s face twisted in silent anguish, teeth sinking into lip.

 

He cannot feel these things. There is no branch in his path along which he can do what he desires—not to sink in ecstasy into that tall proud body, not to pull his captive into an embrace—and not be reviled, not to see loathing on Thranduil’s face. So his foot traces Thranduil’s spine, steady and strong, and Thranduil rocks gently in unbearable sorrow until he falls at last into an exhausted shuddering sleep.

 

So elves do sleep, when they are exhausted.

 

Thorin lies awake for hours, wondering how he has fallen so far, how the light can have gone so easily out of the entire world.

 

* * *

 

 

When he awakens, it is from slow dreams of languid sun and the shadows of branches on his face. For a few moments he remembers—was he once so happy? Was there something so warm and so peaceful in his heart?  
  
Then he opens his eyes and finds himself resting in the silver flow of Thranduil's hair, and feels the tense and shift of the elvenking's body, and knows that he lies dreaming with his enemy in his grasp.   
  
The elvenking has shifted, in his sleep. He does not lie at Thorin’s feet now, a defeated foe; he is curled further up the bed, still breathing slowly and steadily, dark bruises beneath his eyes betraying the extremity of his exhaustion. His knees rest against Thorin’s shins; his feet are tangled among Thorin’s feet. Thorin’s own hand is caught up in the shimmering mess of Thranduil’s hair.

Memory of his own vulnerability sweeps over Thorin like nausea. He tries to remind himself that Thranduil tolerated his touch, and only remembers how his heart ached. Surely he is not so weak? He remembers

Thranduil is making a mockery of him. Undermining him with his helplessness, with his beauty, making him an unfit king. Perhaps he _has_ been bewitched, as elves turn the eye and twist the mind, as his father warned him. Did he sleep through last night's council? Was he to be so easily made a fool?  
  
He feeds Thranduil from his hand again, this time not allowing himself to look at the flicker of tongue against the crumb of the loaf, studiously avoiding the question in Thranduil's eyes. He is strong against elvish enchantment, is he not? His eyes are dark and he knows Thranduil fears him. He is a king.  
  
He is staring at the curve of Thranduil's lip where that pink tongue has just traced, captivated, ensnared. He is sick with the need to touch, to taste, to bite. And Thranduil, who is watching his expression intently, sees this in him, and understands that Thorin aches at the sight of him, and sees at last some vestige of power left in his station.  
  
Thranduil's eyes fill with cunning, as if they had never been empty, and he swallows his morsel of bread, locks eyes with Thorin, and licks the curve of his lip with slow deliberate intent.  
  
And Thorin curses his own weakness, curses his own helpless need, even as he cups Thranduil's jaw in his hand and tilts the elvenking's head back and follows the trail of Thranduil's tongue with a drag of his own lips. It is not a kiss, he tells himself. He only wants to taste.  
  
But he binds his enemy again with brusque and trembling hands, and leaves him lying on the bed without daring to look at his face again, to see the triumph on that pale and delectable mouth.  
  
Thorin should have bitten him instead.

The ease with which Thranduil sees into him leaves Thorin reeling and sick with vulnerability. He retreats into his library, staring at his shelves with eyes that see nothing, wondering if his own secrets are laid bare, if the old tales and superstitions of elvish sorcery are true.

Everyone has secrets, and Thorin knows it; secrets are how he compels his most rebellious subjects, how he brings his kingdoms to heel. Thorin’s secrets are, perhaps, more dangerous than most. He has killed for them, and if pressed he would kill again. He wants to be a good king, and a powerful ruler; but there are things he wants more.

The library seems to stifle him, though sunlight falls on the low writing-table through the focusing-lens high in the air shaft above. He cannot stay here, not with Thranduil so near, not with fear and lust warring in his flesh.

Wrapping himself in a heavy cloak, he leaves his chambers with hurried steps, and lets his feet find their path, knowing where he will end up.

The door is low and heavy—fitting, since the passage that descends to it is rough-hewn and broader than it is tall, a place where even dwarves may feel the oppression of stone above their heads. It opens easily enough, if one knows the secret; Thorin presses his palm to a marked place on the stone, and the door grinds in its tracks and slides into a recess, leaving the passage beyond clear.

Three steps, and he is in an open place, a cavern so tall that the claustrophobic passage before it is a mockery. Beyond Thorin’s feet there is only a shelf of rock, jutting perhaps thirty feet into the abyss, stretching scarcely twice that on either side. Water trickles down the stone and pools at one end of the shelf, forming a clear dark mirror beneath which kernels of gypsum cluster like pearls in a coffer.

This is a stronghold, the last retreat of the last survivors trapped in Erebor when Smaug broke its doors and burned its people. It is not exactly a secret, but those who know of it see no reason to speak of it; the only treasure that lies here is grave-loot, of a sort.

For on the one side, there is a pool of water, which may sustain life for a time; and on the other, there is a heap of bones.

Intermingled with rotted cloth and the small, useless treasures of fleeing victims, lie the remains of the few dwarves who starved here, long ago. They must have been close to his grandfather, to have known of this place, but it availed them nothing in the end.

Thorin has not had them buried. He can scarcely bring himself to look at the heap. Something in him compels him here, something that feels like gold-lust but is more potent, more sickening. Something in him wants to… to _loot_ the old bones, to dig for their personal treasures, to possess the things they held dear enough to carry to their graves.

He feels it rarely, when he is in a fell mood, but when he feels it he finds himself here, and shudders with disgust at what things lie beneath his skin. What monster is he, that he can hunger for the scraps of gold that lie among his rotted kin?

This is, paradoxically, what holds him back from utter madness. Greed and gold-sickness run in his blood, but here Thorin must face his avarice, and weigh it against the legacy of his line.

Perhaps it will cure him of the insanity of his obsession with Thranduil.

He stares into the water, his back to the door, and thus he scarcely notices the soft steps behind him until he hears his nephews chuckling.

The sound is obscene, in this sacred space. Thorin grits his teeth, wanting to shout at them, but he realizes they must have followed him at a distance, and they do not know the significance of this makeshift tomb. Indeed, Kili is exclaiming over the foulness of the bone-pile, and Fili even approaches it, scuffling at the ragged outliers with his booted toe.

At this, Thorin does bark at them. “What do you mean, following me like thieves in an alley,” he says, and they have the grace to look slightly abashed.

Kili says nothing, but gives Fili a prompting nudge, as if he has already fed his brother the words he wishes said; and dutifully Fili replies: “We only meant to summon you to the afternoon meal, but you never heard our calls, and we assumed you were pondering the weight of kingship. So we followed you.”

“What place is this,” asks Kili, looking about, peering into the haze of the distant cavern-roof. “Is that sunlight? What crevice is open to the surface? Is it guarded?”

Fitting questions, but Thorin has no time for them. “This is a grave,” he says, gesturing to the bones. “Your kin fell here, who were not lucky enough to escape Erebor ahead of the dragon’s fire.”

“Go on,” nudges Kili to his brother, and Fili takes up a bit of loose stone and hurls it into the chasm. Thorin does not wait for the sound of it striking; there is an ancient dwarven taboo against casting stones into deep places, and though the younger dwarves were raised above ground they surely must have the sense to avoid waking anything that might sleep below.

“Out,” Thorin roars, and ushers them both from the grave-shelf with rough hands, shoving them back up the hallway. He should have raised them better, even in exile, even though the death of their mother had made their faces hard for him to bear for a time. Their madness is, in a way, his own fault.

Thorin has no stomach for a meal, and less for an evening at the great table. He takes enough for Thranduil to his chambers, and there he feeds his captive again, letting silence reign between them. When Thranduil makes to ask a question, clear purpose in his eyes, Thorin snarls some meaningless defiance at him, and Thranduil subsides into the vacant acquiescence that Thorin now recognizes as his refuge from fear.

“You smell of water,” Thranduil ventures at last. “Mineral water, like the leach-spill of a deep cave.”

A chill seeps into Thorin’s bones, and he seizes Thranduil by the jaw and twists his head to force and hold his gaze. “What do you know of deep caves,” he says, laboring to keep his voice steady.

Thranduil tries to pull away, but Thorin is too strong for him still, and Thranduil is only able to lower his eyes. “I do not seek secret knowledge,” he says, his voice careful and quiet. “I know that Erebor must have its hidden reservoirs, and I care not why you went to survey them. It is a scent that reminds me of home, that is all; Mirkwood too had its deep lakes. I, too, know something of hiding a kingdom in a cave.”

Thorin examines him, but there is no hint of duplicity to be seen, only caution and uncertainty. He thinks Thorin has been in the cisterns, watching his city’s water reserves. He does not know.

In his breast, his heart lightens, but a curious twist of pain remains. Thranduil, so wise and so immutable, a force of nature—whatever enchantment and illusion Thranduil wields, he is not a mind-reader. He is only an elf. He does not know about the grave.

Thorin will own him soon enough, inside and out, and feel no vulnerable pang of adoration. Thranduil is only a captive, subject to Thorin’s whim, hungry for a taste of home.


	4. Chapter 4

Attending his councils has become a misery. Thorin hates every moment of the bickering and jostling; he finds it harder and harder to focus on the matters at hand, when he has so plainly stated his will and his advisors still wallow in their plans like pigs in filth. He supposes it is good practice for his nephews, that they argue these useless points with their elders—for him, he knows that while he is king there will never be any truce with the Necromancer, any alliance with the weak and flailing countries of Middle-Earth’s surface, or indeed any sustained relationship with men or elves that does not consist of tribute paid to Erebor for its mercy.

This is what he tells himself as he sits in his council, gazing into the middle space, forgetting the arguments as they enter his ears and thinking instead of Thranduil, who now takes food easily from his hands and lies without protesting in his bed at night. During the days, he reads from Thorin’s library, a luxury that Thorin does not begrudge him—but when the endless councils are done and the interminable meals in the great hall have run their course, Thorin returns to his chambers with immense relief, to begin the only part of his day that engages his interest.

He has begun to train his new toy. Bread and meat are simple enough, and Thranduil accepts them peacefully, but Thorin now brings him more complicated treats. Sliced pears, each slice given with great care and with a palm pressed to Thranduil’s skin, so that the sweetness and the shivering dread are the same; a smear of honey, spread across the palm of Thorin’s hand, which Thranduil must lick up if he wishes to taste.

The latter pushes Thranduil’s will nearly too far, and he gives Thorin a look of pure spite, though he watches Thorin’s hand with frank hunger even after Thorin has regretfully washed his hands in a basin. But the next day Thranduil dares more, and by the end of the week Thorin has compelled him to accept touches that leave him shuddering with revulsion, a curved palm cupping his backside or a long inhalation of Thorin’s face pressed to his throat, as long as Thorin offers in return a bite of bread made with fresh herbs.

He teaches Thranduil to kiss his feet; he makes Thranduil ask for scraps of food; he compels Thranduil to ask for his touch, to earn each bite. And Thranduil learns quickly. Within a fortnight Thorin has only to glance at his naked captive to see him grovel, to watch him press his face to the floor and moan.

The first time Thranduil kisses his feet without being ordered, Thorin rewards him with a sweetmeat, and the look on Thranduil's still-too-thin face kindles a fire in Thorin's belly.

The next time he gives Thranduil a truly costly tidbit: six seeds from a pomegranate, one of the first of the oncoming winter, fruit ripened under the white dying sun. He does not comment on the tears that well in Thranduil's eyes as the seeds stain his lips. And he accepts as his due the way Thranduil kneels, leans, and presses his face to his new master's calf in an agony of gratitude.

Perhaps there is more to it than the currency of food. Thranduil watches his face closely, even when Thorin is caught up in reading and merely rests in a chair by the fireplace, and the weight of his gaze is a constant goad. Thorin shivers each time he catches Thranduil watching, and Thranduil’s eyes never follow him so closely as when Thorin’s hands lie on his body. He accepts his tidbits with as much dignity as he can muster, but Thorin makes little progress in this manner, and the going is slow.

Until Thranduil permits his hand to rest and stroke upon his chest, an accompaniment to the cup of wine that Thorin tips to his mouth. Thranduil’s eyes meet Thorin’s own as the cup tilts, and his throat lifts to swallow and he breathes in deep, and Thorin’s fingertip scrapes rough over Thranduil’s skin and catches on the nipple, which tightens. Thorin is frozen, paralyzed, all his senses drawn to the contraction of skin beneath his fingerprint; he feels his own lips part and the deep motion of his own broad chest, the friction of his own skin and hair within his clothing, the sympathetic tightening of his own nipples in response.

Thranduil is still looking at him, and Thorin sees his pupils spill like ink and fill his eyes. Perhaps he is responding to the friction of skin, though Thorin doubts it: he has shied away often enough, and his guard is so high against violation that his skin goes white and his heart races if Thorin turns and rests against him in the night. He accepts comfort; he accepts the most platonic touch. Thorin had begun to despair of ever touching him in passion without killing him. He has never seen Thranduil look like this, look _aroused_.

It does not occur to him to connect his own arousal with Thranduil’s. He shifts his hand, thumbs Thranduil’s nipple until Thranduil’s teeth close on the rim of the cup and he hisses subtly, and he knows that his face is a ruin of desire, and the more Thranduil watches him and sees the force of his wanting, the more Thranduil responds to him.

Thorin lowers the cup, and Thranduil licks his lips without breaking the gaze. In the pit of Thorin’s belly, hunger blossoms into madness, and Thorin pushes his captive back against the bed. Thranduil’s hands rise, but not to push him away; his fingers tighten through Thorin’s clothing to hold him just above the hips. Even his long fingers cannot wrap far around Thorin’s solid waist, though his thumbs dig into the lines of muscle that slant above Thorin’s hipbones and his forearms tense with the strain of his grip.

Thranduil wants him, even if only for the power and gratification of knowing that Thorin wants him in return. Thorin cannot even begrudge it of him; he wants, and he pushes forward, lowering himself over Thranduil’s body—

He can see the moment when Thranduil’s body rebels, when the seduction of power gives way to the threat of physical contact. The color drains from his skin; his wide pupils contract and his eyes turn glassy; his pulse races and stutters in his throat, and he frowns in bewilderment, as if something has been offered him and then snatched away.

Thranduil wants to be desired, but he is not yet ready for that desire to settle against his skin. Thorin can see how he struggles against the loss of control, how he wants the sweetness of lust to return even though he fears what lies beyond mere lust, and how much he hates that his body is making the decision for him.

“In time,” Thorin says, “I will give you what you want, when you are ready.” It is no joy to him, to pull himself back and let Thranduil lie recovering like a warrior gasping with a pouring wound, but he knows now that he will have what he wants someday, when he has taught Thranduil’s body to trust him.

In time, Thranduil pulls away, well enough recovered to feel shame and disgust, and when Thorin touches him he shudders and says: “Take your filthy hands off me, beast.”

Thorin only laughs, but not cruelly; he knows the truth now. And indeed, after a while, Thranduil lies still and lets him stroke the length of his side with gentle fingertips, tracing the lines of his ribs and his hip where they are beginning to regain a hint of their former smoothness, and when he pulls away Thranduil makes a sound of protest before he can stop himself.

“Easy, then,” murmurs Thorin. “Soon enough,” and though Thranduil shudders again he does not push his limits, and instead lies next to him, gently stroking Thranduil’s scalp until they both drift away into sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

The tide has turned between them. Thranduil is hardly a pliant plaything, but now when Thorin allows himself to show his hunger for Thranduil’s body, he finds that his captive is dizzyingly responsive.

It amazes Thorin that Thranduil can display such desire, and still be in danger from his touch. It takes him longer than perhaps it should have, spending so much of each day in Thranduil’s company, to realize that what Thranduil wants is not lust but _Thorin’s_ lust.

Bitterness fills him at the realization, and were he not fulfilling the duties of a king, attempting to survey the weekly shipment of grain, he would have stormed away to be alone. As it stands, he flees as quickly as he is able, and finds small solace in isolation, sitting against the foot of his throne in the dark emptiness of his throne room.

He knows now that Thranduil has not enchanted him, not if he is willing to risk his own life to inflame Thorin’s lust, not if he views Thorin’s desire as such a valuable coin. For Thorin understands now that Thranduil does not want to lie with him, nor even to be touched by him in any way beyond mere comfort. Thranduil thinks he has found a lever by which he can move his captors, by which he can seize control.

And Thorin has fallen for it. Shirking his duties, tolerating rumors, Thorin has been bewitched indeed, but not by magic—he has seen what he wanted to see, and nothing more.

He finds himself on his feet before he knows it, and a half-formed intent draws him to one of the royal treasure-vaults, where he has seen—yes, in the chaos of gold and gems still unsorted from the years of exile, there is a chain and collar. No doubt intended for some favored hound of some lost noble, it is a lovely folly, a filigreed thing set with milk emeralds and moonstones. Its clasp is of the type that slides; its chain is long enough to keep a pet close without the owner stumbling.

Back to his chambers, where Thranduil lies curled in his chair, staring into the fire; across the room in a few strides, while the bitterness is still strong, before Thranduil can remind him of what a fool he has been. He lifts Thranduil’s hair with one great hand, leaning down, and Thranduil protests but does not pull away, no doubt expecting another chance to mock his captor’s lust.

The clasp shuts with a click, and Thranduil’s eyes widen as the cold metal settles upon his throat. Thorin lifts the chain, and Thranduil’s gaze flicks from captor to binding and back again, confusion on his face.

  
"You have spent long enough in my chambers, enjoying my hospitality in privacy. You will eat at my table," says Thorin, gesturing for Thranduil to stand. "At my feet."  
  
Thranduil finds his voice at last. "What will I wear," he says, and Thorin wants to laugh at him.

“Emeralds and moonstones,” Thorin says, and as Thranduil begins to protest Thorin adds: “You like lustful eyes upon you well enough; my kingdom is filled with covetous creatures enough to satisfy even your pride.”

Lips parted but frozen in dismay, Thranduil looks up at him, and Thorin steels himself against the horror and betrayal he sees there. He wonders for a moment if it is Thorin alone whose desire Thranduil wants, but the thought rolls away like water from oiled steel, and he orders his captive upright.

“You cannot be serious,” says Thranduil, leaning forward but not quite standing up from his seat. “You must be joking. Will you truly parade me naked in a collar for your subjects to leer at me?”

Thorin pulls harshly upon the chain, and Thranduil recoils, pulling back against the tension. Thorin snarls at him. “Do you tire of my hospitality? Would you rather be turned out to die?”

“I was resigned to my death before I came here,” says Thranduil, clinging to the chair with white knuckles. “Have me killed, then.” His words are bold, but Thorin can see the dread in them, the fear instilled by earlier hope.

For his part, Thorin only laughs at him. “You are too useful to be killed,” he says. “If you will not submit, I may give you to my councilors. Do you know, they have been urging me to give you to the Necromancer? They think you would be most valuable as a living tribute, to sweeten our surrender or to take the sting from our independence. A very small effort on our parts, and ended soon enough; but who knows how long you will live, if we hand you over? Or how long you will wish to live?”

Thranduil does not speak again, but with nostrils flared and eyes wide and wary he slips from his chair and kneels on the floor, then bends forward into a bow. “I will obey my master,” he says in a hollow voice, and Thorin sighs and pulls him by the shoulder to make him stand upright.

“Obey, then, or be given to a less patient master to obey,” Thorin growls, and scarcely allows him time to collect his dignity before leading him from the room.

He feels the eyes of his kin following him as they walk, and he sees how their gaze lingers upon the tall thin form of Thranduil, and how they observe Thranduil's nakedness and understand that Thorin has found a new and precious toy. For his part, Thranduil follows in dazed silence, neither walking in proud stature with shoulders thrown back, nor quite cringing from others’ view.

Thranduil seems lost in thought, to Thorin’s bitter imagination. His eyes flick from corner to corner as if seeking a place to run, then focus in the distance as if Thranduil is reconsidering and choosing a course of action.

It will not avail him much. If he escaped, where would he go? Who would shelter a treacherous elf, in a world ruled by the Necromancer and his ilk? Who else would protect him, if not Thorin?

If the price of that protection is submission, humiliation, well. Surely Thranduil must recognize that he has very little to offer in return for his life.

A hush descends over the table as they enter, but conversation picks up a moment later, and Thorin imagines how those voices who had whispered of sorcery and enchantment must be choking now. Thranduil settles, as bidden, at the foot of his throne, pulling his knees up to cross them demurely and conceal some portion of his nakedness. Thorin rests his hand on Thranduil’s head for a moment, as if praising a tamed beast, and raises his hands to signal the beginning of the evening meal.

The first doubts settle in Thorin’s mind when his nephews arrive late and their laughing eyes alight upon Thranduil's form. Fili actually whistles, like a dockworker harassing a fishwife. Kili is quieter, but Thorin sees how he stares, how he worries his lip with his teeth. The two of them take their places at his side, though Kili sits closest to his hand; Fili seems to think nothing of it, the young fool. Kili, in fact, is close enough to Thorin that Thranduil must guard his fingers whenever Kili shifts in his chair, and might as well be sitting at Kili’s feet as at the king’s.  
  
It seems that Thorin’s display of victory must also be a display of his own supremacy. So he eats, and he feeds Thranduil from his fingers, and he watches and listens; and when Fili's jests and jibes become too vulgar, he slaps his hand down on the table. "He is my guest," Thorin says, and he lets the resonance of his kingship echo and resound with double meaning. "He is mine, to do with as I wish, and you will respect my wishes."  
  
Fili turns sullen at this, and mutters with his fellows. But Kili waits until Thorin has finished his wine and given enough drink to Thranduil to put roses on his too-thin cheeks, then leans casually forward to knock his half-empty glass over. Red wine pours across the tablecloth and spatters like blood on Thranduil's skin.

Thranduil flinches as the droplets run across his mouth and drip down his throat. His eyes, which have been locked to the ground with shame when they are not following Thorin's hands from plate to mouth, rise to meet Kili’s, and Thorin sees how Kili stares at him and how his stare is so boldly returned.

"My apologies," murmurs Kili. "So clumsy of me. Though... he is so lovely, stained."  
  
The pit of Thorin's stomach falls. He knows what Kili is playing at; he knows why Thranduil’s attention is so captured now.  
  
"But surely you will clean him yourself," adds Kili, his clever eyes roving and lingering on Thranduil's skin. "Or, if you wish," and he glances up to his uncle, "I will be glad to do the work for you."  
  
His meaning is clear. Thranduil lives, and is still defiant enough to stare now at the king’s nephew with head tilted in consideration. He wishes to choose a new master, and thinks that Kili might be acceptable, and does not fear the blatant disrespect that this shows to the king; and this tells Kili that Thranduil remains undefiled, that not only has Thorin refrained from forcing his captive but that he has also neglected other torments save this show of ownership.   
  
And if Fili is content to warmonger and crow and revel in bawd, Kili is growing wiser, and will perceive weakness where it lies naked and trembling, and will strike like a serpent where he knows he cannot fail.

Kili’s eyes linger, and Thorin says to him: “You will win your own prizes in time; do not think to take mine from me.”

“But I _have_ won a prize,” retorts Kili, and Thorin remembers that Kili and Fili were the ones who took Thranduil from his previous captors, in battle no less. “Although I must say you are very generous. I would have kept it for myself, instead of sharing it with my subjects to be gawked at.”

Thranduil’s shoulders go very tight at this. Thorin places a hand on his head again, and feels him flinch, and hates his nephew with seething passion. “He is mine,” Thorin says, so blind with jealousy he can scarcely speak, and Kili shrugs and turns back to his brother.

Fili, however, does not seem to understand the danger of the moment. “Oh very well then, if we’re sharing,” he says with his golden smile, and leans around Kili to tug Thranduil’s hair.

Thranduil goes perfectly white and still. He has heard every filthy suggestion, every violent imagining, that Fili has chattered all night, and while Kili’s ambition is a thorn in Thorin’s side, Thranduil fears only what awful things may befall himself.

It is only natural. What should Thranduil care for Thorin’s throne? It still feels like treachery, and Thorin strikes his nephew’s hand away. “Mind yourself,” he spits.

Fili starts to sit back, abashed; then he looks to Kili, who shrugs, and he reaches out again, not quite touching. “Such lovely hair he’s got,” taunts Fili. “I should have taken a bit of it before we gave him to you.” Thranduil pulls away from him, horrified, and Thorin’s hand moves to his side, where he has not carried a blade in years.

Kili, however, for all that he loves to encourage his brother’s wickedness, is sly enough to recognize that things have gone too far. While Thorin reaches for an absent blade, Kili pushes his brother’s arm away and then shoves his chair, forcing Fili to grip the table with both hands to avoid being upended. “Drink more, and hold your tongue,” he admonishes Fili, and Fili obeys, muttering into his cup.

Thorin watches, struggling to calm himself. Fili answers to Kili now, does he? He listens when Kili speaks, and closes his ears to his king? He will regret that, in time.

It comes to him that Thranduil may yet learn to see Kili as his savior, if he is the only one that can corral Fili’s excesses—even if Kili himself is the voice of unreason in his brother’s ear. Thorin cannot allow it. “I will not stay here and see my guest treated so rudely,” he says, and gestures for Thranduil (who is shivering, blank-eyed, ready to bolt) to stand. “We will retire.”

The others at their supper continue eating, as though nothing has happened. Thorin leads Thranduil, still shaking, back to his chambers, and washes the wine from him with his own hand, and holds him to his breast in their bed until the shivering ceases and Thranduil's eyes have turned from numbness to humiliation to mortified gratitude for his own safety.   
  
He considers having Kili killed. The boy will have his throne, if he is not careful. He will steal Thranduil; he will have his brother as a puppet, and rule by Fili’s crown.  
  
And yet, he reflects, as Thranduil turns to face him, long thighs tangling with Thorin's own powerful calves, white hand curling reassured against the black hair of Thorin's broad chest—Kili is the only one of his possible heirs who truly understands, who will not give aid to the Necromancer, who will carry the glory of Erebor into the inevitable war.  
  
Kili cannot be sacrificed on the altar of Thorin's lust. Resources are thin enough on the ground, without slaughtering his own heirs for coveting the throne they will inherit someday. Thranduil may think of him as a warrior thinks of his shield, to be replaced when a stronger one is found, but Thorin is not holding him now out of weakness; he is furious in his jealousy, he is cold as stone in his refusal to surrender. If he must, if Thranduil forces his hand by turning to his nephew, Thorin will destroy him, to keep Kili from getting at them both. The elf in his bed is a liability, and a throne is a fragile thing.


	5. Chapter 5

After this, where Thorin goes, Thranduil goes. He does not seem to feel the cold of his nakedness, only the shame. As Thorin stands breathing smoke in the cold heart of the mountain, receiving a report at the gate of the third west mine and feeling the icy wind from below, Thranduil’s skin is warm enough to be a temptation.

And yet, watching the wary flinching of the elvenking’s exposure, Thorin takes something akin to pity; after all, Kili had a point, and a king’s concubine should not be treated like a whore except for the pleasure of the king. He gives Thranduil a bolt of copper silk on the third day of his public display, embroidered with gold wire and tiny jade beads at the edges, and lets him drape himself before they leave Thorin’s chambers to attend to the king’s duties.

For his part, Thranduil seems to accept the gift with equanimity, but Thorin sees how his knuckles whiten on the delicate edge. Such luxurious fabrics are common enough among the wealthy of Erebor, though of course they are usually sewn into kirtles and waistcoats, not draped free-form over the body, and this particular fabric provides Thranduil little protection from the roving eye. Still, Thorin knows it has been some time since Thranduil wore royal robes and spider-silk, and he sees the light in Thranduil’s eyes as the cloth wraps and drapes about his skin.

The cloth is a sign of favor, and Thranduil wears it with a straight back; but the day comes when neither bare skin nor raw cloth will do. On this day, Thorin has finally agreed to treat with Rohan, but not with the withered king of Meduseld and his heel-nipping cronies. No, word has reached him that a small army has departed the golden hill, perhaps four hundred men, led by a young captain in disgrace. It must be the king’s sister-son, Thorin thinks, the hot-tempered boy who has reportedly defied his betters again and again; for who else would be set to military duty as punishment, to patrol the forsaken eastern border of Mirkwood for the Necromancer’s safety, rather than cast into a prison to rot?

A prince in disgrace is a dangerous thing, and well Thorin knows the hunger for home that an exile feels. Four hundred men is no small thing—but horses are worth more than men, especially on the open field. Thorin hopes to sway him with careful words, with the offer of land on the slopes of the Mountain where a bitter man might build his strength and prepare for war.

This will be the lure; the goad will be Thranduil, displayed as a captive, a demonstration of the strength of Erebor and the peril of offense.

For this reason, as Thranduil is wrapping himself in silk like a bride donning veil and sash, Thorin digs through an old clothing-chest; and finding what he seeks, Thorin stands and turns and takes hold of the silk at Thranduil’s shoulder, and pulls it away.

A sign of good training, how easily Thranduil accepts this. He only shies away for a moment when Thorin’s fingers brush his skin, and heat rises in his face. “Will I be naked today,” murmurs Thranduil, quiet steel in spine and voice, and Thorin considers it for a moment—but more than the pleasure of seeing Thranduil’s naked body, he wants dominion over Thranduil’s dignity, and he wants to display it for all to see.

“No,” he says gruffly. “Kneel,” he adds, and Thranduil falls to his knees without complaining, though his back is stiff. Thorin unfurls cloth and fur, shaking dust out of the folds before wrapping it around Thranduil’s shoulders, and with one hand sweeps Thranduil’s hair from the nape of his neck to pull it free from the shaggy hem.

His hand feels rough and enormous against Thranduil’s shoulder and throat, and Thranduil bends his head as Thorin’s palm passes over his skin, letting Thorin’s hand rest on his nape in ownership before taking up his hair and lifting it from beneath the heavy fur. The only sounds in the room are of the silken weight of Thranduil’s hair falling, and the soft wet sound of Thranduil’s lips parting, and the hammer of Thorin’s heart.

“This is my old cloak,” Thorin says, hoarse and dry-mouthed. “I wore it on the day I took my kingdom.”

“On the day you drove the dragon from his hoard,” Thranduil murmurs, and Thorin closes his eyes.

“On the day I emerged from the mountain and saw the beast fly away,” Thorin says. He does not clarify further; the tales are all very clear. Thorin, they say, entered the mountain alone, not willing his kin to die at his side, but wishing for an honorable death; he struck the dragon twice on the brow and once on the breast, and so great was his wrath that Smaug fled from him, and all that was seen of him was the enormous dark shape of him soaring in the starlight, racing southward, never to be seen again.

The tales agree, though Thorin does not like to hear them. But one uses what lies at hand, and after all he was the first to tell the tale. He clears his throat. “It will cover you, and also remind my people of my kingship,” he says, and motions for Thranduil to rise.

Of course, the cloak is too short; but Thranduil shrugs it from one shoulder and binds it over the other and across his breast, so that the descending spiral of it forms a shapeless gown whose trailing corner nearly reaches his feet. It leaves a perilous amount of skin exposed, and Thorin swallows at the sight of it, feeling foolish—has he not seen Thranduil naked every day and night for months, and laid his hands on almost every inch of skin, and slept pressed next to Thranduil’s body?

The jeweled collar closes on Thranduil’s throat, and the elvenking stands tall and humble before him, laden with the marks of Thorin’s possession: filigreed gold, heavy cloak, and at his wrist still the slowly rotting strip of cloth with which Thorin sought to remind him of his captivity all those weeks ago. It is not enough; Thorin wants bite marks branded in his skin, fingerprint bruises, a mouth swollen in service—but he cannot have these things, not yet, and besides Rohan is waiting.

 

* * *

 

 

Sunlight descends through light-shafts into the throne room and catches on every angle of glistening stone. At Thorin’s sides stand his nephews and Balin; at his feet reclines Thranduil, curled up in the safety of his cloak, one foot extended like a lounging cat, looking over his shoulder at the visitors.

Seven of them, Rohirrim with long gold curls under horse-tailed helmets, smelling like a stable and sweating even in the cool of the royal cavern. Their captain kneels, inclining his head, and rises again to await royal address.

“You come to my throne room still in armor,” says Thorin, drumming his fingertips on the arm of his throne.

The captain answers, unbuckling his helmet as he does so: “We left our gowns and velvets at home, your majesty.” His voice is clear and bittersweet, and as he lifts his helmet away a torrent of gold escapes and his face is revealed, beardless and fine-boned and terribly young.

Thorin startles, though he conceals it. He is not especially well-versed in the physicalities of humans, and finds it hard to tell one from another at times, but surely a smooth-cheeked youth is an unusual choice of commander. At his feet, Thranduil takes a breath through his teeth, a slow considered sound.

“You are not Theoden’s sister-son,” Thorin says at last. “How then came you to exile?”

“A family quarrel,” the captain says, and his mouth thins to a line. “I did not wish to wed, in point of fact, and thus I defied the command of the king’s advisors and deprived them of a new generation of heirs.”

Thorin frowns. “I had heard that the lady of Meduseld is fair,” he says, “if very cold—”

He means to go on, but Thranduil calls out, interrupting him: “There is more than one line of duty to one’s king, my lady, and even in exile you seem to have found a path of service to your uncle’s throne. Though I wonder—does your uncle truly speak as king, these days?”

A calculated insult, but even as the captain pauses in bewilderment to be so addressed by a concubine, Thorin remembers that Thranduil is wise with words on his own, and his words undermine this captain’s loyalty. The _lady_ captain, the king’s sister-daughter. Thorin catches this detail just in time, and presses his ankle against Thranduil’s side in thanks. Kili and Fili exchange a weighted glance.

“He would,” says the captain at last, with bitterness in her voice, still watching Thranduil closely. “But leeches and snakes surround him, and he is… infirm, in his old age.”

Very nearly a traitor’s speech, here at the brink of war with alliances still shifting. Thorin keeps his voice calm as he pushes the conversation forward, but feels the thrill of advantage, seeing that this young captain’s loyalties are teetering; he mentally sums up the battle-edge that will come from owning such a force. It will not even cost him the yoke of a true alliance.

And she wants it—Thorin can see the longing on her face as they discuss matters of supply and maneuver. She knows what is offered, and she is no fool. Her punitive guard-duty is a waste of her strength; her king is usurped by manipulating sycophants and the vagaries of premature old age and the mysterious illness and decline of his son. Thorin offers an escape, with a hope of vengeance and fulfillment at the end of hard work and danger.

But something holds her back. Even as Thorin leans forward to press his advantage, her eyes have begun to drop, to look back over her shoulder. There is a threat in the room, though he does not perceive it.

At last her discomfort grows too great for even her bold heart. Shaking her head as if to wake from a dream, her golden mane dragging across well-used armor, she heaves a sigh and looks up to Thorin. Her face is twisted, regretful, angry. “I wish by all my fathers I could do this thing,” she says. “More lies at stake, however, than my own honor. I come to you for a different reason, King Thorin—I bring you a diplomat, a man chosen by… by those that rule me, to serve in your court and bolster relations between our lands.”

Thorin is aghast. Beside him, he can hear Fili’s slow release of breath, his rising fury. He has wanted horses for years, wanted the carnage and destruction at his fingertips of great hooves pounding flesh into the dirt.

And Thorin has wanted these things too, though perhaps not with the fierce delight that Fili seeks them. Kili is the only one of them not much rattled; has he not argued that Rohan will destroy itself in time, and Erebor be free to take up its lands and its place at the Necromancer’s side? Kili’s hand is firm on his brother’s arm, and as the diplomat emerges from the group of horsemen, Thorin hears him whispering encouragement in Fili’s ear.

The diplomat—Heorhod, he is called—is a barrel-breasted man with the red face of a drinker, weary eyes, and what Thorin supposes Meduseld would consider the height of manners. Clapping one hand to his breast, he salutes the king with a straight back.

Thorin wants to spit. This drunkard is no man of strategy and communication, unless Thorin misses his guess; his presence is nearly an insult.

Fili likes him well enough, once introductions are made, and in a handful of minutes the two are conversing easily—the topic, however, is ale, with occasional boasts of violence, and Kili meets his uncle’s eyes with an unspoken rebuke. _How can you tolerate this_ , his face accuses Thorin, and then his gaze shifts to Thranduil and turns to spiteful consideration.

The audience ends. Fili and Heorhod depart quickly,  amid tales of bloodshed and war; Kili lingers at his uncle’s side, close enough that he nearly treads on Thranduil’s hem, feet threatening to soil his uncle’s cloak. Fili pauses only a moment to look over his shoulder, and Thorin sees for a moment how he is torn—he likes Heorhod, and he tells himself that entertaining a diplomat is a king’s duty, but he hesitates to leave Kili’s guidance, and Kili will not follow him.

Kili, who cares nothing for Rohan’s regard, has found a distraction for his brother. And Fili is, despite himself, distracted: a moment later he and his guest are gone, and Thorin pauses to exchange parting words of regret with Captain Eowyn.

“I apologize,” says Eowyn, clasping his hand, and leans closer to add: “I would accept, and wholeheartedly, but my brother is—very ill.” The stilted manner of her voice makes Thorin suspicious, but no more is forthcoming, and he turns away when the words of parting are done.

To find Kili holding Thranduil by the elbow, murmuring to him; and Thranduil looking closely at the place where Kili’s fingers rest upon his arm, his head tilted in calculation.

Thorin pulls Thranduil’s chain hard enough to make him stumble. Boiling jealousy nearly makes him sick. Kili’s hand falls away, but he leaves Thranduil with a pointed look, and Thorin wants to kill them both.

 

* * *

 

 

In his chambers, he struggles not to give voice to his frustration; but Thranduil stands quietly, wrapped in his cloak as if protecting himself from Thorin’s rage, and Thorin wants to shake him for it.

“He will not protect you,” says Thorin at last, hoarse with contained feeling.

To his credit, Thranduil makes no show of ignorance. “He has not offered me any bodily harm,” he retorts, crossing the room to sit in the chair by the fire, drawing his legs up into the seat with him. His ankle slips free, and Thorin refuses to stare at it.

“He will not offer you anything,” Thorin says. “He is young, and foolish, but he has been left to his own devices for too long, and his tastes are… undignified.”

“His brother hungers for blood,” Thranduil points out, averting his gaze. “And you… you want power. I also want power, and yet I have obeyed you in all things, have I not? But if you—if you tire of me—I want someone to protect me, when you have forgotten.”

“Tire of you,” says Thorin. His mouth feels numb. “Forget you? I have been going mad for a decade, Thranduil, and in all this time I have not stopped wanting you.”

Thranduil’s eyes fix on the fireplace, and the light on his skin is over-warm, hellish, hungry. “You wanted to hurt me,” he says, in the steady voice of one who has come to terms with pain. “Even now, you wish to subject me to your will, to own me. Even in your lust, what inflames you is not my body but the submission of my body—tell me I am wrong, Thorin. Lie to me.”

Thorin can say nothing in his defense, nothing that will not leave him even more defenseless. Is this not what he has been telling himself since the beginning, that Thranduil’s beauty has no power over him, that he only seeks revenge? He licks his lips. “Do you think Kili will fall entirely under your spell? He wants you for one reason: you are mine, like my throne and my kingdom, and he wants everything that belongs to me.”

Thranduil is silent, and Thorin comes closer to him, step by step until he is close enough to touch, though he does not trust himself to touch without bruising. “He and his brother meant to hurt you, when they took you,” he reminds his captive, remembering himself the filth and terror of Thranduil’s first days in Erebor.

“But they took me,” whispers Thranduil.

Thorin forces himself to breathe. “They spilled themselves on your face,” he hisses. “They treated you like a whore; they did not see you as a thinking creature, only as some sort of animal. They still want to barter you for their own gain.”

“Let me tell you,” retorts Thranduil, “of my captivity, of how the orcs kept me bound until my feet were numb and useless and my hands frozen into claws. Let me tell you about starvation, about how they kept me awake even when I was faint with exhaustion—and let me tell you, Thorin, I longed for death! I wanted nothing more than a coward’s escape. When Mirkwood fell and was razed, I thought I knew pain; when I last saw my son, bound and carried away by orcs, I thought I had resigned myself to my fate. What awaited me in the Necromancer’s pit…”

He shudders, and his voice goes taut and dark. “I wept with relief while your nephews did their foul work, Thorin. I opened my mouth when they told me and I let them paw my body until I was on the brink of death. My _fea_ was like a frightened bird, ready to flee my body at the first sign of violation—I was half gone before they knew it, from nothing more than rough hands on my thighs. I was _disappointed_ when they chose to let me live, to spare me the mercy of violation.”

Thorin wants to clamp his hand over Thranduil’s mouth, to stop the rush of pity and revulsion and sympathetic despair he feels. Instead he stands, shaking, an arm’s reach from Thranduil’s skin, unable to take the last step.

“And they brought me to you,” says Thranduil, lifting his eyes to meet Thorin’s. “You, who make me ask for things I feared would be done to me in violence; you, who bribe me with food and comfort until my body betrays me. You, who are waiting until I forget how to resist you, when you can break me and hurt me and _I cannot get away_.”

Thorin reaches out, and his hand crosses the last distance and closes over the skin of Thranduil’s arm, where Kili held him before. Thranduil does not pull back, but his eyes close and some paroxysm of emotion wracks his face before he can still himself entirely.

“I will submit to you,” whispers Thranduil, “and serve you however I may. I see no way to freedom, neither under starlight nor even in a swift death.”

Thorin’s hand tightens on Thranduil’s arm, feeling the give and structure of thin muscle beneath. “Kili does not offer you freedom,” he says, “nor a swift death, I fear.”

Thranduil sighs, and looks into the fire. “But he wants _me_ ,” Thranduil insists, and Thorin realizes that to Thranduil this means the possibility of escape through death, and it freezes him in his bones.


	6. Chapter 6

Kili is waiting in the hall ahead, under the low ceiling.

Thorin tenses; he had only meant to visit the tomb-vault again, to spend some time reminding himself of the balance between desire and duty, to feel the self-loathing of greed and know in his bones that what he wants and what he _should_ want are very different things. He has never been approached on the path to the tomb; but he realizes that he is not an easy person to catch alone, and his nephew is clever to seek him here, where his melancholy moods take him.

They are still far enough from the sliding door of the vault that Thorin gives up his walk entirely and turns instead back toward the main halls of Erebor, letting Kili catch up with him.

“I have news for you,” says Kili in a low voice, once he is close enough to be heard without speaking at full volume. “I sent out scouts a few weeks ago—”

“Scouts,” repeats Thorin dubiously. Kili has not been given any command of dwarves, save his own chamber-staff.

But Kili plows on, not stopping to explain: “I acted on a hunch, uncle, and I was rewarded. Do you remember Gandalf, that old meddler, who deserted us under the eaves of Mirkwood? He has been a friend of elves time out of mind. So I sent scouts to look for him, carrying rumors of elven prisoners taken from an orc-caravan, and of course he snatched up the bait.”

“Rumors of elven prisoners?” Thorin stops in his tracks, turning to skewer Kili with a look of fury. “Did you tell Gandalf that we have taken the elvenking?”

“Oh no, no,” protests Kili. “I know you treasure that secret, and only share it with drunken layabouts and disgraced horse-fuckers.” His tone is placating, but with a rising bite, and Thorin wants to strike him.

“Make your point, boy,” spits Thorin. “Am I to expect a meddling visitor in a pointed hat?”

Kili’s face is almost unreadable, but his mouth is tight at the edges and there is a strange pleading in his eyes. “You put so little faith in me,” he says. “You dote on my clot-headed brother, and you, you praise him for every little dance he does; but you expect nothing good of me, and even when I bring you a prize you turn your back on me for it.”

Thorin knows he should be more gentle, that Kili craves not only his throne but perhaps also his love; but he has little patience these days, and many burdens to carry, some of the heaviest borne out of Kili’s actions. “Did you tell the wizard or not,” he says, suddenly exhausted with the conversation.

“Not exactly,” admits Kili. “But I hinted a bit, and it was enough coin of word that my scouts were able to trade it to him for information. Specifically, the information that a cohort of some two hundred Mirkwood elves are clustering on the border of Mirkwood, hiding in the broken earth and dead trees.”

Thorin rolls his head from side to side, considering the implications. “A sizeable host,” he muses. “Surely the old fool does not think to make war on Dol Goldur.”

“Does it matter?” Kili leans toward him, gesturing, his voice dropping to a forceful whisper. “Two hundred longbows, enough to drop a company on the battlefield, and them beholden to us for their king! With your pretty plaything, you might command them entirely—”

Thorin turns on him snarling. “Can you think of nothing but the elf?”

Kili recoils, pulling back from Thorin in anger. “Can you think of nothing but your _pud_ ,” he hisses back. “He is our enemy, and a valuable hostage, and you parade him in silks and jewels and fondle his hair while you eat! He’s bewitched you, uncle.”

“Are you accusing me of madness,” says Thorin with menace, “or merely of stupidity?”

Kili’s expression loses its slyness, and for the first time in years Thorin sees a hint of fear on his face. “Elves have strange powers,” he insists, sounding defensive. “He clearly has—has the power to enchant his captors’ hearts, to undermine their will.”

“Superstition,” scoffs Thorin. “If you knew him, if you saw his terror—”

“Then he would have enchanted me too,” hisses Kili, but his face is longing, terrified. “For Durin’s sake, uncle, for the sake of Erebor itself, send that creature away! Will you leave me a throne, or a heap of rubble?”

The air between them grows colder; the words hang in the air like a bell-toll. At last Thorin speaks, low and dangerous: “I had not known I was leaving _you_ a throne at all.”

Kili reddens, swallows, turns away. “If anything happens to my brother,” he adds lamely. “He is… foolhardy these days.”

“If he is a fool, you are the one that goads him to it,” Thorin shoots back.

Unfazed, Kili pushes on. “You needn’t give the elf up entirely, only… only put him in a proper prison, rather than your own bed, and let him be used as he is meant to be used.”

The dark hunger on Kili’s face nauseates Thorin. “As he is meant to be used,” he repeats.

“As a tool of political advantage,” says Kili, recovering his poise, “naturally. Elves have such elevated senses of honor; they will come running if you let me send them even a scrap of his flesh.”

“And I will not give you even a scrap of his flesh,” says Thorin, twisting his lip; and with this he strides away, leaving Kili alone in the claustrophobic hall.

 

* * *

 

 

Dinners in the great hall take on an awful tension. Kili sits as close to Thorin’s seat as possible, and pays entirely too much attention to Thranduil; Thorin, in turn, displays his ownership as often as he can, offering Thranduil treats from his hand to see how obediently he takes them. Figs, flaky morsels of pastry, choice bites of meat, berries and candied violets—all around him, chewing and conversing, his subjects watch this happen: the last king of Elves, prostrating himself for a mouthful of indulgence from Thorin's hand.  
  
Kili looks at them both with cold hatred. And Thorin matches him with a look of triumph, for what would-be usurper could lay his hand upon his enemy's head—like this, broad fingers catching spider-silk hair—and feel how that ancient head tilts, and feel that proud cheek stroke against his palm?

Thus begins an unspoken battle between them. Kili is swift to recruit his brother, who spends his meals these days drinking and chattering with Heorhod when Kili does not call for his attention. The two of them, Kili and Fili, are relentless: goading and sniping, tainting each meal with sly suggestions. "You should bring him to dinner marked," says Fili, "or bleeding a little," and each day his hints grow more bloody-minded, until Thranduil shudders at Fili's descriptions of needle-punctures and broken, punished hands.  
  
Kili smirks, and does not contribute, but in time spite grows in his eyes and becomes hatred, and however courteous he is to Thranduil and however coy Thranduil’s response, he simmers with scarcely controlled rage.

At last, when Thranduil leans away from him to accept a sip of wine from Thorin, Kili snaps. "I hope he shows his gratitude in your bed," says Kili, nudging Thranduil with his foot. "It must be very hard to keep him alive, with the things I suppose you do to him—unless, for fear of hurting him, you are letting him command  _you_ ."

Abrupt silence falls at the table. The elders look at Thorin with wide eyes; such insolence cannot go unaddressed.   
  
"Watch yourself, nephew," says Thorin, and his voice is heavy with poison.  
  
But Kili's eyes are aflame with strange force. "Or shall I watch  _you_ , uncle, as you are enchanted by this... this spy of orcs?” Heorhod chokes on his ale, and Thorin wonders, that his nephew is willing to speak with such open disrespect that even a jolly drunk is shocked at his words. Kili presses on: “We brought him to you, my brother and I, to serve as your plaything; instead you nursemaid him and look at him with fondness, while the kingdom is run ragged about you. Either bend him to your will, and sell him for our benefit, as I have told you again and again; or break him and be done with him, if your cunning is not great enough to bring a mad elf to heel!"  
  
The challenge hangs between them like a death-knell. Thorin realizes the depth of his folly, how far his control of the throne has slipped. He knows what comes next, the battle-challenge, the warlike lads who will come for him, one after the other, breaking his defenses (which are rusted from his time in the mountain, where he must practice with the sword rather than honing his skills on orc-flesh)...  
  
He is so stricken by his own doom that he does not realize until too late what Thranduil is doing, why those long fingers are working at his belt, why his knees are being spread with a twist of shoulders so that Thranduil can press himself between, seated on the floor with his mouth leaned close to Thorin's belly.  
  
"Let me show them," says Thranduil, his voice trembling with shame. "Please, my master, let me show them how you use me, punish me instead of them."  
  
Thorin cannot imagine what he means. Have they not seen Thranduil lie at his feet? Does he wish to be bound, as he was when he first came to be Thorin's slave?  
  
But Thranduil pushes up Thorin's tunic, letting his loosened belt slither to the sides, and as he opens Thorin's laces with shaking hands Thorin remembers that Thranduil has also been a king, and understands the delicate balance and timing of power, and trusts him enough to sleep in his bed with his skin pressed burning to Thorin's own.  
  
Then Thranduil has him in hand, and his head falls forward as his lips part, and Thorin has only a moment to understand before his cock is engulfed in slick heat.  
  
This has never been done to him. It is not common, among the dwarves; it is perverse when given reciprocally, and degrading to the one giving pleasure if he is given no pleasure in return. For Thranduil to offer his mouth so wantonly, to perform this thing so publicly even though he gags and his skin burns with humiliation... 

There has never been such a stir in the great hall. Kili sits down heavily, mouth open and eyes dilated, his gaze locked on Thranduil's silk-draped form between his uncle's thighs. 

As for Thorin, he cannot seem to breathe; in his boots his toes clench and flex; he is nearly drowned in the pulse and throb. Already, so quickly, he is on the verge of spilling, on the cusp of forgetting his dignity entirely and grasping handfuls of silvery hair and thrusting his cock into Thranduil's throat and choking him with his come.  
  
But it would not do, to be undone thus before his subjects. He knows what comes next:  _the elvish whore_ , they will say,  _has bewitched him with his mouth_. He understands that Thranduil has chosen to back him in this fight; and he realizes that Thranduil’s gift to him is not meant to be pleasure, but power.

So he swallows the burning pressure and accepts the torment of forgoing satisfaction and he puts one boot on Thranduil's hip and shoves him away, so that Thranduil sprawls naked upon the pavement beneath the table, his shoulder resting heavy against Fili's shins.

The loss is almost more than he can bear. But he is a king, and he must appear strong, and he tucks himself away with a scowl even as Fili reaches under the table and wraps his fist in Thranduil's long hair and hauls him upright by it.  
  
Thranduil's eyes are glassy, his breast heaving. He is, inside, so far away, and Thorin thinks he must have over-reached himself, that in taking Thorin's cock he took himself to the brink of an awful death, and remembers that Thranduil _wants_ to die. In the space of a moment Thorin wrenches Thranduil’s hair from Fili’s grasp, and has him back to his knees with his chain clasped firmly in his fist (away from Fili's twitching hands, away from Kili's hunger-blown eyes).  
  
"Presumptuous," says Thorin, once he can speak. "But you have been a good pet, so I will not beat you for it," and he finishes his meal in a few bites of silence while Thranduil lies helplessly at his feet, trembling.  
  
When he leaves the hall there is no sound behind him. There has never been such a king as him, he knows; but there is no other king besides him, either.  
  
If only Thranduil were not so silent behind him, so nearly-broken. If only the price might not be so great.

 

* * *

 

 

Thorin orders his chamber-guards away, and locks the doors, which can only be barred from within. Beside him, Thranduil moves as if in a dream, his body shaking; somewhere in the walk from the great hall, his fingers have buried themselves in Thorin’s shirt-sleeve, gripping the cloth for support and balance, and yet somehow avoiding the skin beneath.

Drawing him to the bed, Thorin unfolds Thranduil from his silk and eases him down onto the coverlets, hands unsteady with the fear that his touch might be too dreadful for the elvenking to bear in his vulnerable state. At first Thranduil lies weak and cold, his pulse frail beneath his skin, white as if nearly bled out. Thorin grimaces; he had hoped, in the great hall with Thranduil’s tongue riding against the swollen shaft of his cock, that his captive had at last grown accustomed to intimate touch.

It seems, however, that he has not. Thorin comforts himself bitterly with the memory of what touches Thranduil has permitted before. At least Thranduil trusts him more than his nephews; at least Thranduil is not so deeply in fear of him, Thorin tells himself, that he may die in anticipation of rape from something so small as Thorin’s palms upon his thighs.

Indeed, as Thorin chafes Thranduil's limbs and feels them warming, he is shocked—even horrified—to realize that Thranduil's cock is stiffening, that the length of him lies against his white belly and bobs with each stroke of Thorin's hands along his sides, along his thighs.

He pulls his hands away; and Thranduil groans, his expression regaining its awareness only to be flooded with frustration, and his whole body arches toward Thorin's withdrawn touch.  
  
"Please," he says. "Please, I will finish you, I will let you—if only—"

If there is anything Thorin wants in all of Middle-Earth—kingdoms, gold, the love of his nephews, the destruction of the Necromancer—it pales beside the temptation to have his way with Thranduil now, while he is begging for it, while he is so obviously himself in need. But Thorin remembers with awful clarity the nearness of death in Thranduil's eyes as Fili dragged him upright, and the betrayal and loathing on Thranduil’s face as Kili spoke his piece and proved himself no fit protector.

He understands that Thranduil has nearly killed himself, swallowing his cock to make his position stronger. It hurts him, that Thranduil—who has accepted such an ever-growing progression of touch and caress—still finds his body so loathsome that he is not merely humiliated but nearly  _slain_ by forcing himself to take Thorin’s cock into his mouth.

But he lets himself touch, because Thranduil begs with such desperation. He touches Thranduil's face, and sees how his eyes flutter closed and how he twists so that his mouth seeks Thorin's fingers. Thranduil's lips are soft, and close around Thorin's fingertips as if being fed honeycomb, and Thorin touches more, his other hand spreading across Thranduil's belly, his face lowering to press against Thranduil's white throat (oh, the scent of him, dry moss and leaf-mould and the hot sap of firs)...  
  
And yet, as his knuckles graze the head of Thranduil's cock, the tall form under him is convulsed with a gasp that might be pleasure and might be a breath choked off in violation. Thorin wonders if, perhaps, his captive thinks him brought to hand at last, and means to work his own death in Thorin's pleasure.   
  
It is enough, if only barely, to pull Thorin away from Thranduil's keening throat, to control his starving palms, to stagger him back into the seat by the fire, where he watches Thranduil pant and look at him with questioning eyes and plead to be touched while shame paints his skin as dark as spilled wine.  
  
"Please," says Thranduil, twisting half-upright as his breath comes back to him. "I thought this gone forever—I did not know I could still feel—please..."  
  
Still Thorin watches him, not trusting his voice, and Thranduil continues in anguish, scrubbing his face with one shaking hand: "Why will you not  _touch_  me?"  
  
Thorin cannot answer him; the answers he wants to give are so vulnerable, or so deadly, or so cruel, that he does not dare speak. He wants to see Thranduil undone in pleasure, and he wants to keep Thranduil alive even if he wishes to die, and he wants Thranduil to want _him_ instead of merely using him as a protector.

 Thranduil only wants him now, Thorin tells himself, because Kili has revealed his true motives, and there is no other escape close at hand.

 So he sits in wretched silence while Thranduil creeps beneath the blankets and shakes with untold emotion, and when the servants come in to bank the fires for night they find Thorin staring into the coals with face gone harder and darker than the mountain itself.


	7. Chapter 7

The night passes, and the morning comes, but the echoes are not forgotten.

 

Fili disappears for two days into the city where it spills from the gate and spreads down the mountainside, where ale and whores are plentiful and even the heir of Erebor can drink in dissolution with a human companion. After this, he returns as if nothing has changed; but his bloodthirsty comments to Thranduil seem to have been only the beginning of a new hunger for cruelty. He spars with the lads in the barracks, and breaks bones under his hammer, and laughs; the noble maidens shy from him, and his chamber-staff scurry in the shadows terrified. He brings disheveled human women in from Laketown and calls them concubines, and brings them to the table naked and bruised and weeping, and caresses them with his palms and kicks them with his feet, and _laughs_.

 

Thorin forbids it quickly, recognizing the mockery that his nephew makes; but he also fears worse than mockery, that Fili may be learning a taste for something bloodier than war.

 

Kili does not approach his uncle again, but Thorin begins to keep a wary eye on his plotting nephew’s movements, and within the first two days he starts to understand how Kili is gathering support. He means to supplant Fili, that much is certain; and Thorin privately wonders which one of them he would prefer to win.

 

And in all this time, Thranduil obeys him, goes with him in silks and chains to his duties and audiences (though Thorin, shaken by the accusation of ‘orc-spy’ and the weight his advisors give it, leaves Thranduil in his chambers when in private council). Thorin gives him two more lengths of unsewn fabric, one a burnished gold with no embellishment and the other moss-green and embroidered all over in deeper forest hues—and yet he does not dare show his favor, his growing intoxication, where it will make him seem weak. In the sight of his people, Thorin is reserved; his eyes do not follow Thranduil’s steps, his hand stays at his side even when the warmth of Thranduil’s skin is close and compelling as gravity.

 

For as Thorin strives to master his kingdom and his heirs, the winter deepens, cold in the mountain's heart as out on the fells where the blond horsemen ride. The slope-farmers take to fixing plows and maintaining winter herds, and fresh things must be bought abroad and carried by barrel and wagon to the Mountain. The streets of the city outside are silent, its citizens withdrawn into the heart of the mountain for the dark season. Teeth of ice grow into pillars where water drips down at the gates of Erebor; but no smothering roof of snow can quench what burns in Thorin's blood.  


He cannot bear this hunger. He takes to touching Thranduil more and more while they lie uneasy in their bed: first with flat palms across his breastbone, at the juncture of hip and waist; then with fingertips that tense upon the subtle fluctuations of muscle beneath the skin. Then there is a night, near midwinter, when he allows his hand to stray further, to wrap and slowly stroke, while Thranduil shudders and rocks in his encircling arm and his shoulders knot against Thorin's mouth.

 

He makes himself stop, then as always, panting his frustration into Thranduil’s hair as he stills his hips and swallows the throb of desire. Thranduil sobs with need, hips jerking until Thorin forces himself to draw back from the friction, and Thorin’s palms flatten against Thranduil’s stomach from behind him, a pleading embrace. "I could kill you," he says, and Thranduil replies: "I might not care," and this is enough to steel Thorin's resolve and pin his wandering hands to the bed-ticking for that night and many after.

 

Still, he cannot afford to be distracted these days. Fili wants Thorin's throne with transparent lust, and while Thranduil lies and sits and paces in Thorin's chambers, reading from whatever books he is brought, Thorin wars with his nephew over council tables. There are so many battles to be fought, and so few dwarves to fight them-- even now, as the Necromancer cordially awaits their surrender-treaty with the full promise of destruction if they do not comply, they must deal with questions of supply and manpower and funding and alliance. Food for the soldiers means dwarves and man-subjects on the surface, farming, where they must be guarded from orcs and from their own winged fears. Soldiers themselves must be had for coin, or by conscription, and too much coin spent or too many farmers' lads conscripted will gut them sure as any scimitar.

 

Fili has a head for it, if only he had the tongue as well; and by his furious outbursts and his hints of growing cruelty, Thorin manages to keep his advisers and constituents on his own side, while borrowing bits and pieces from his nephew's insights. Thorin tells himself that Fili will not be a bad king, when he understands the cost of it, but he shivers when Fili speaks of a possible alliance with the Necromancer as a last-ditch resort.

 

He does not seem to realize that Rohan’s easy terms of alliance are only permitted because its throne is tottering, and when Theoden and his son are dead, the Necromancer’s man will sit in Meduseld as king. He does not seem to understand that the Necromancer’s terms are slavery for all his subjects, and butchery for all his foes.

 

And yet it is Kili that Thorin watches most closely, cleverest and most liked of the two. When an adviser reprimands him boldly over the council table, and his fellows nod and smirk instead of shying back from his sides, Thorin finds that Kili has been supping at their tables. When it takes him seven days to hear about an uprising against the guards among the miners, he discovers that Kili has intercepted the knowledge and dealt with it himself—a favor, Kili says, to beg his uncle's pardon, but they both know it was a king's duty to fulfill. 

 

More than one night Thorin is up until the dawn, or later, and he finds himself apologizing to Thranduil when he returns, as if he owes the elf his presence. He sends the last of the autumn fruits when council runs late; he sends a pile of books and a harpist when he is forced to spend two nights away, examining the state of the army.

 

He does not dare speak to Thranduil of the elves, Mirkwood elves, gathering in secret at the edge of the forest. For as much as he reviles Kili’s suggestions, two hundred elven longbows are a force capable of turning the tide of a battle, and for a wretched hour after a bitter council he even contemplates making the trade. He could keep the whole thing a secret from Thranduil, send a lock of hair instead of a grislier trophy, promise the elvenking in return for a few years of service… but Thranduil would learn, eventually, and he would never be content in Thorin’s company again, and the elves are certainly not foolish enough to die by the score on the word of a dwarf-king with a grudge. He would have to give his captive up, eventually. Thorin imagines it: his chambers empty, the rumors of sorcery silenced.

 

Then Thranduil passes behind his chair, looking into the fire, wearing Thorin’s cloak instead of his copper silk; his hand brushes Thorin’s arm on the rest and the touch is so casual that Thorin scarcely notices how Thranduil curls his hand to his breast afterward. In his passing lingers the tannin-scent of oak leaves.

 

The cost is too much.

 

If only Rohan had not also refused them.

 

Kili forces his hand, telling the secret of the Mirkwood encampment in council the very next day, and Thorin finds he can scarcely defend himself against the vitriol thrown in his face. Fili shouts at the council for even considering such an alliance, and calls Kili elf-lover before the white-beards of his council hall. Kili meets in private with some of the high ladies of court, and to them he whispers that Thorin met with the elves in secret, and that his rude manners and harsh temper drove them away.

 

Thorin has always loved his nephews, though it is with a balanced and kingly love, correcting them where he can and hoping for the best when he cannot, but this open rebellion tries his regard terribly. And when he catches Kili stroking his foot up and down Thranduil's calf beneath the table, he drags them both into the scullery—scattering maids and cooks as he goes, his face like a thundercloud—and dresses them down.

 

"The throne will be yours in time," he says to Fili, "and yours as well, Kili, unless I misread your scheming. But you little bastards will contain your plots until this war is past, or by my ancestors' beards I will have your heads sent to Rohan to show them how ruthlessly the dwarves deal with fools.”

 

Kili makes a show of indignance. “My brother will be a mighty king,” he says, “wise and powerful, and you call him a fool? If your tongue weren’t so venomous, perhaps your advisors would love you as I love Fili, and work for your benefit as I work for his.”

 

“So you admit to sniping at my throne for your brother’s sake, then. By my beard, have you no sense of timing? Will you give all our lands to the Necromancer just to wear a puppet's crown? Can you not wait even fifty years?"

 

Fili sulks; Kili spits at the hearth. "The Necromancer," he laughs, full of a child's ruthless dismissal. "Some wizard willing to bend over for Gundabad, no doubt. All his strength is in his alliances, uncle, and if you turn your nose up at elves we will be crushed by men rather than by orcs. All very well for you to battle dragons, in your day, but now we need a warlord and a diplomat, and I see only one of each here."

 

As if even one dragon were not the equal of all Rohan's armies, Thorin wants to say, but the words stick in his throat, for he does not want to discuss his most famous battle just now. "You discount the Necromancer at your peril," he says instead, and when Kili cuts him off with a furious laugh, he adds: "How would _you_ go about the task of lying to a wizard and two hundred elves? How will you convince them to fight and die for us on a dwarf’s word that their king lives in our care, O clever diplomat?"

 

"I would bring Thranduil along to the parley," says Kili, but there is a sudden uncertainty to his voice, as though the idea rings false to him, as though he has only just now realized that Thranduil's descriptions of dwarvish hospitality would break the alliance before the papers could be signed. "Or," he adds, "I would send them _pieces_ , and threaten worse if they do not obey; then send them into battle at the front, and keep the elf for my own pleasure until the elves are used up."

 

Something about the way he says  _pleasure_  makes Thorin's skin crawl. Until now he has seen Kili's jibes as taunts aimed for his ears alone, and his envy for Thranduil only a tangible icon of his lust for the throne; but now he thinks of the way Kili's eyes rest on Thranduil at the table, and hears Thranduil’s soft despairing words, and remembers through a haze the dark hunger in Kili's eyes as Thranduil's mouth sank around him—

 

"If I give him as a reward," says Thorin, "it will not be to a leaderless lot of fickle elves, but to a dwarf who serves his king well," and he wills himself not to see the convulsive leap of Kili's throat, the secret Thorin prays he will not need to know.

 

“If you keep him,” urges Kili, “he will destroy you, and if you send him away then all Erebor will know that you rely on _my_ counsel.” Thorin turns to stomp away, and Kili shouts after him: “You will lose him in the end, either way, and your kingdom as well.”

 

Thorin turns on him, raising an accusing finger. “And what will you use to justify yourself, when your brother inherits and you crave his throne in turn?”

 

“I support my brother,” insists Kili, but Thorin sees dark suspicion enter Fili’s eyes, and is relieved to see the danger finally reach through Fili’s confidence. Perhaps this is the crack into which Thorin can drive a wedge.

 

“You _control_ your brother,” says Thorin with a dismissive gesture, a wave of the hand. “All Erebor sees it. You whisper in his ear and he obeys you—of course you support him!”

 

Fili looks between them with a growing frown, and Thorin adds: “And when he dares dissent, when he bucks your control, you will have his throne under your usurping arse before it has cooled from his.”

 

With this he turns to leave; Kili shouts after him some meaningless defiance, but Thorin is already gone, and his nephews left to argue their ambition.

 

* * *

 

So unsettled is he, fearing that word of Mirkwood will reach Thranduil and set him trying to escape, that he leaves him to dine alone in his chambers, and bids him bar the door when Thorin is not close by. When he takes Thranduil out in public, he insists that Thranduil wear his shaggy-shouldered cloak even over silk, a mark of ownership. He finds himself strangely gratified by the way Thranduil clutches it to him, as if Thorin's hands are the cloth that shields Thranduil's skin from prying eyes.

 

More than this, he loves the easy way Thranduil wears it in their chambers, the way Thranduil's waterfall of hair tangles in the shaggy mantle of it, likes the way it smells when Thorin presses his face to it, unthinking, in the morning—like Thranduil, but not quite. For Thranduil is not a creature that leaves its scent behind, nothing that can be kept and stored; he leaves so small a trace where he passes (no footsteps, no stray silver hairs, not even a sound unless he wishes it) that the faint breath of oak leaves Thorin finds himself seeking, inhaling, following over the ragged cloth—

 

Thorin only realizes he is doing it when the trail of scent disappears entirely, replaced by embarrassment. Behind him, beneath the thick winter blankets of their bed, Thranduil is watching him with hooded eyes and a tight mouth, a beast of prey who sees that the hunter has taken up his trail again.

 

He says nothing, though, and Thorin leaves the cloak upon the floor of his chambers and goes to the steam-rooms to bathe, suddenly overcome with need; but the steam does not purge him, and the denial of nearly a month (how has he survived, sleeping in the bed with his captive, scarcely allowing himself to touch lest he lose his mind and break Thranduil's body) is so much, so strong. 

 

He wants to make Thranduil sleep on the floor, or on a pallet. But when he tries to sleep while Thranduil is sitting up reading in the chair, he finds that he cannot sleep without that oak-scent about him, without the warmth in his arms of Thranduil's breathing, without the small murmurs and wary silences of the last candlemark before he drifts off to sleep. 

 

So great is his frustration that his mind turns to another custom not commonly practiced by dwarves (at least once they come of age). It is beneath the dignity of kings; but Thorin is beyond dignity, and in the dark hours of the morning Thorin awakens, finds Thranduil deep in sleep or some elvish facsimile thereof, and nearly groans aloud at the painful response of his body to the warm slumbering skin at his side.

 

He presses the heel of his hand over his cock, where it lies engorged and aching against his belly; he lets himself thrust, subtly, just one slow tentative stroke. Thranduil’s weight against his arm is a torment, and leaves the sensation of his palm utterly wanting, but his body is in such sore need that it hardly seems to matter.

 

Another slow stroke, and he bites his lip to hold back the sound that wants to escape—not a sound of pleasure, but something sharper and more bitter, a groan that tightens his throat like tears. What he wants is more awful, more shameful, than mere physical release.

 

But physical release is simpler than loving his captive foe; so, with agonizing slowness, careful not to jostle the sleeping form beside him, Thorin strokes himself root to tip, then thrusts up into his hand with careful reserve.

 

It takes all his will and might, not to simply let go and pull at himself furiously, to pursue the oblivion of pleasure like a drowning man reaching for air. But the thought of it—of being seen like this, the splendid king and champion of Erebor, pawing himself like a boy of forty—and the thought of Thranduil’s disgust…

 

And yet, as he slowly works himself closer to the edge, struggling to breathe evenly and holding his toes stiffly pointed lest he accidentally buck against the friction, his control slips bit by bit, until he feels the weight of the bed shift and freezes, throbbing but terrified of exposure.

 

Thranduil moves for a moment, then settles, and Thorin breathes out slowly; then Thranduil’s elbow falls back and his neck twists and he turns entirely to pull himself up on one arm and look down at Thorin with an expression perfectly unreadable in the dark.

 

Thorin burns with shame, and then for a moment he feels a surge of anger—why should he be ashamed, to do what he wishes in his own bed, to be seen in pleasure by a slave?

 

But before he can speak, Thranduil leans further upon his arm to press his length against Thorin, and places his hand on Thorin’s belly, and murmurs: “Are you tormenting yourself deliberately?”

 

The pressure of his hand is like a brand, and Thorin is burning; in his hand, his cock jumps and spills a single drop. “I meant to come without waking you,” he says, and his voice is rough in his throat.

 

Thranduil’s head tilts, and his hair spills against Thorin’s arm, another awful weight of touch. “Can dwarves do this to themselves?”

 

Thorin tries to speak, but his words desert him. _Stay and watch_ , he wants to say, _keep your hands on me, let me touch you too._ “As any other race,” he finally manages, feeling ashamed and defensive, wanting to be left alone in his humiliation.

 

Thranduil only looks at him, and his fingers move, slowly and deliberately tracing through the whorls of dark hair and only slightly depressing skin over soft flesh and tense muscle. Thorin groans at the touch. At last Thranduil speaks: “Show me.”

 

Thorin throws one arm across his face and groans wholeheartedly, and Thranduil lets go his belly and strokes up the length of his arm, palm across massive upraised tricep and bicep, rising to his elbow and falling again with firm articulation until his fingers slip around behind the root of Thorin’s broad shoulder and his thumb presses into the thick-haired crease of his armpit. “Show me,” he says again, his voice low and curious, and Thorin thrusts up into his own hand with a hissing sigh.

 

Thranduil watches him, palms him, follows the line of his side downward and digs his fingertips into the thick muscle between and below Thorin’s ribs. “Ah,” he says, as if his hands are sweeping dust from a statue, as if his touch is revealing a thing of beauty, a work of art.

 

Safe beneath the blindfold of his own forearm, Thorin lets himself forget dignity entirely, rocking and thrusting, his heels digging into the blankets and his thighs straining in his desperation. It seems only a few moments pass before he is gasping, tightening,

 

He feels Thranduil’s hand moving, following the thickest trail of hair from navel to breastbone, a startlingly delicate weight; then Thranduil’s wrist rolls and his fingertips seize Thorin’s nipple and roll it between them, firm enough nearly to cause pain.

 

The room is airless; all Thorin’s body seizes up in a long rictus of ascent; then, belly clenched and heel scraping the sheets, Thorin spills his seed in wild abandon and feels himself nearly torn apart by the force of it.

  
He lies panting, with Thranduil’s fingertips still heavy on his chest, and does not dare uncover his eyes until Thranduil speaks: “We elves are not given such mercy.”

 

Astounded, Thorin rolls to face him, heedless of the smears across his belly and the mussing of his sheets. “Are you too noble and holy for such behavior, then?”

 

Thranduil’s face is very close to his own, and very white in the faint light of the air-shaft above them, through which a sliver of moonlight creeps distorted by the high lens above. “We are not made to give ourselves pleasure,” Thranduil says, his voice equally sorrowful and strained. “If I… did what you have done, I would only bring myself frustration, and ache at the end.”

 

Thorin shifts his weight, and realizes that the elvenking is hard as well, the length and weight of him resting now just below Thorin’s hipbone. Painfully hard, he guesses, as each miniscule motion of his leg brings a hissing quality to Thranduil’s breath; he rolls his hip against Thranduil’s cock, and is rewarded with a broken groan and a smear of wet against his leg.

 

“And do you ache now,” Thorin whispers, moving against him again.

 

“Mercilessly,” says Thranduil, his dark eyes still locked on Thorin’s face in the scant moonlight.

 

“Then show me,” says Thorin. “Take yourself in hand; show me what your body is made to do.”

 

Thranduil lets out a long, shuddering breath. “It will be fruitless,” he says, and Thorin expects him to refuse. Instead, Thranduil trails his hand through the slick mess on Thorin’s belly and lowers it to his own cock, where he mimicks Thorin’s earlier motions in growing desperation. His lips fall open, and his eyes never leave Thorin’s face, but even though his hand works steadily and small sounds of struggle escape his throat, even though his thighs quake against Thorin’s legs and his breathing grows unsteady and wretched, he does not spill.

Finally he closes his eyes, and a moment later he sobs aloud, a long tortured moan that knots in Thorin’s belly and pulls at his spine. He is trembling, every muscle taut with distress, and he is so beautiful that Thorin’s heart hurts just to see him.

 

He reaches out, and it is so easy; he puts his hand on Thranduil’s shoulder and presses him back down to the bedcovers. The feel of Thranduil’s body arching beneath his hand, beneath his shifting weight, is a revelation and a curse. He catches Thranduil’s wrist, uncovering his cock, which is dark in the moonlight and leaking a steady stream of pearly fluid down the underside; then, reeling with the delirium of aftermath and brazen in the near-dark and heartbroken with desire, he bends down until his beard and hair fall unbound across Thranduil’s body and he takes his lover-enemy into his mouth, burning length and liquid pulse.

  
Thranduil cries out, and his palms batter Thorin’s shoulders; his long legs kick against the bed, a pantomime of struggle; but he calls out:  _yes, please yes_  and thrusts into Thorin's mouth like a beast, like a thing possessed, and Thorin chokes down the length of him until he realizes that Thranduil's hands are now merely scrabbling at his shoulders weakly and that the fingers against his skin are cold.  
  
Thorin can taste how close his captive is to climax. Salt and bitter oak are slick against his tongue, and even as the life threatens to slip from Thranduil's body, the cock in Thorin's mouth strains and pulses and grows so velvet-hard against Thorin's tongue that he feels his own cock stirring again in response.  
  
Thranduil will die, he reminds himself. Too fast, too forceful; and Thranduil remains his captive, naked among dwarves, his body primed for disaster and violence at any moment—so Thorin pulls back, lets Thranduil's cock fall against his belly, sees the glassy distant eyes and the wracking effort of each breath, and sets his face against Thranduil's hipbone in something like sorrow and rage and tenderness together.  
  
So nearly lost, this time. How can he keep this up, knowing that each lapse in self-control might cost his captive lover's life? To keep him here only postpones the death to which Thranduil will so clearly submit; to send him away, to show weakness before Kili’s ravening ambition, would cost Thorin his kingdom, when he is he last ruler that will stand against the Necromancer when Gondor is fallen.

 

“Please,” says Thranduil, still shaking, his fists clenching at his sides. “I can bear it—I swear to you—I want it—”

 

“You want it,” whispers Thorin, “but you do not want _me_.” Each word cuts him like a knife. “There are great distances between lust and love.”

 

“Not for elves,” pleads Thranduil, but his voice is weak and his skin is still pale and cold, and he seems bewildered by the reaction of his body.

 

“Then why are you dying of me,” whispers Thorin, and Thranduil can only shake his head and draw up his knees, facing away from Thorin in despair.

  
Thus torn, Thorin curls around Thranduil, his protecting arms restoring the even draw of Thranduil's breath, his murmurs of reassurance slowly easing warmth back into Thranduil's limbs. Thranduil still begs him, even shaking and cold, rocking in his grasp and mouthing words of supplication, but Thorin believes now that what he seeks is not release of body but of spirit: climax and then silence, cold stillness, eternal slumber.

 

In time Thranduil’s groans subside to whimpers, and Thorin mouths into his ear again and again his apologies, his sorrow, his shame. He is too weak to fight both his own desires and Thranduil’s death-wish, and the cost is Thranduil’s suffering. He twines his calves about Thranduil’s knees and weeps into the crook of his shoulder until Thranduil is warm and his heartbeat steady and his shoulders slumped in defeat. They are still both hard, aching; but death is too close on every side to permit the passage of love.


	8. Chapter 8

Thorin is dreaming again. He is dreaming of Mirkwood, before its fall: dark in the corners and bright between the leaves, a moss-slicked mirror of the caverns Thorin calls home. He remembers it as if he had once loved it, as if it had not claimed fully half the members of his Company as they passed beneath its eaves, as if the leaves themselves had not turned black around them as orcs chased them to the river under the Necromancer's sudden surge of power.

  
He had lost Bilbo there, a friend who might perhaps have been more (if Thorin had not come into Mirkwood with his heart set and rusted on revenge). He had lost dwarves he had known since childhood; their dreams (of Moria reborn, of children grown and wed) died on the blades of orcs, and only Thorin's dream survived.  
  
But this dream is golden, warm and sweet, empty of the hate and obsession that has driven him for so long; and when he wakes and breathes in the scent of Thranduil's hair, it takes a moment for him to recognize what has been missing.  
  
When it returns, it falls over him like a plague, turning his stomach and numbing his skin. He thinks of himself the night before, tongue and palate worshiping Thranduil, whom he has spent so many decades longing to torture and defile. Sucking like a whore, not even asking for the same in kind as a return, a degradation fit for a slave, not for a king savoring his revenge.   
  
He had been mad. He must have been addled by the rush of climax after so long frustrated. He will not let himself think the word bewitched. How has he fallen so far? So he has resolved not to let Thranduil die easily—what of it? Has he not taught Thranduil to beg?  
  
And if what he feels in his heart as he looks at the sleeping form curled beside him in his bed is not pure hatred, if he also feels tenderness and the urge to protect: certainly, surely, it comes from his determination to keep Thranduil alive to mourn his own ruin, from his refusal to let his prey slip into the shadows of death.

On the floor, his cloak—now Thranduil's cloak, he supposes—lies crumpled, a dark piece of refuse stained with blood which he has always claimed was Smaug's. 

What reassurance does he have to offer, in truth, he whose kingdom is built on lies, he whose heart has for so long been poisoned? Thranduil is a fool to be comforted by him—Thorin, who is eternally one palm-stroke from murder, and whose throne will be toppled soon by enemy or kinsmen, one. 

In echo to his dark mood, he scarcely breaks his fast before he receives word from a wagging tongue that Fili has received a coffer of jewels from an unknown party, an ancient silver box swathed in rasping black silk. Thorin knows in his heart who this unnamed benefactor must be, and it chills him to the heart.

He must do something about his nephews, he knows. In the forty-four years since he returned to Erebor, the world has filled with shadows, and if Gondor falls (as it must, he supposes), his will be the last kingdom east of the Mountains to stand against the Necromancer's might. If Gondor were close enough for a true alliance, perhaps... if the Enemy had not got to Rohan first, or even if Eowyn had taken his bait, what an alliance could be made! Crushing Mirkwood between their armies and driving the Necromancer down into Gundabad, or even deeper if the dwarves took few casualties and were strong enough to pursue...

Foolish. He cannot change what has happened, only what  _will_  happen. He knows there are machines and armies in Mordor, and that Gondor must fight on both fronts or be butchered. 

He must be strong on his own. He must be brutal.

If only Thranduil did not tempt him so much. If only his chambers were a place of solace in their own right, rather than (it galls him to admit) because Thranduil is there, to trust and curl against him through an evening of deep thought and desperate planning, to lie in his borrowed cloak against the fireplace and practice the harp, which of course he stole from the harpist.

(Thorin played the harp once, he remembers. It seems like a lifetime ago; the king has little time for music.)

If only Thranduil did not seem so intent on pushing him, kneeling next to Thorin’s chair in the evening and leaning against his thigh to look him in the face. “What do you want," growls Thorin, hating that his cock responds so readily to such casual touch.

Thranduil tilts his head, not quite in reproach. “I wonder as much, myself,” he says, sitting back on his heels. “Why did you hold back your hand last night?”

Thorin sets down the paper he has been reading; his hand has crushed one side of it. “You were dying,” he says bluntly.

“I would have lived,” says Thranduil. “I—I wanted you. Surely my body would have—I would have—”

A brittle laugh escapes Thorin. “You do not even believe your own words,” he says. “I swore to protect you; I will protect you, even from yourself.”

“Arrogance,” denounces Thranduil, leaning forward and pulling himself half upright by the arm of the chair. No longer the supplicant; Thorin reflects bitterly that Thranduil cannot be humble even in kneeling. “You treat me like a child,” Thranduil hisses. “I know this is a risk; I will take that risk.”

“Kings take risks,” snarls Thorin, refusing to be cowed in his own seat by the elvenking’s aggression, even when Thranduil leans into him with such crouched ferocity that his face is close to Thorin’s face and his lower body is digging into Thorin’s thighs heedlessly. Thorin tilts up his chin, letting the jewelry in his beard shift on his chest, looking down at his prisoner. “ _Slaves_ obey their masters. And you, Thranduil, are a valuable asset, one I do not wish to lose to his own selfish lust.”

“You speak of _my_ lust,” growls Thranduil. “You said I would learn to crave your touch, once.” He is almost whispering, his breath stirring Thorin’s beard, his face close enough to kiss, or to bite. "You have awakened in me something terrible, something base and wicked, and you will not satisfy it. You said you wished to hear me beg: have I not begged enough? Will you not touch me?"

"I would break you," says Thorin, whose throat feels too tight for breath, but he cannot help himself, and his hands want so badly, and he grips Thranduil’s naked arms and pulls him upward, skin touching skin, the stained cloak sliding away. His mouth wants flesh, wants to taste and suck and bite, and he leans to press his face to Thranduil's jaw and throat and breathe the scent of his hair—

But Thranduil's voice is in his ear, low and desperate. "I do not care if I am broken," he whispers, and Thorin feels dread and anger fall upon him, imagines the warm body against him gone limp and cold, imagines Thranduil winning his escape at last; and he wonders if Thranduil wants him more than life or if he merely wants to die.

“You are too valuable to break,” Thorin mutters, and pushes Thranduil away before he can lose control of himself.

“I am only a slave,” bites Thranduil back at him. “Or do you plan to use me as your nephews would, and sell me to the Necromancer for his crumbs?”

Thorin snarls at him and turns his face away, frowning into the fireplace. Thranduil rises, waits a moment, and then glides away into the library, leaving an almost palpable air of frustration behind him.

Thorin has a game-piece, a thorn in his side; should he not move it? He cannot give Thranduil to the elves, certainly, if he wishes to gain their good-will; nor will he give up his captive to the torments of the Necromancer; but is there another way to turn this burden to his gain? Is there no other against whom Thranduil's body can be turned as a weapon?

Is there no third path between ruin and betrayal?

Elves in Mirkwood, riders on the plain, and vultures circling the mountain. For almost half a century Thorin has turned his back on every ally but Dain, hoping to outlast the coming war and scrape up the fragments when men and elves have broken each other. But this is… different. His kingdom is divided from within, and Thorin is so weary…

He would give up his throne, if it would keep Erebor safe. Would he not also give up Thranduil, to keep Thranduil safe?

Thorin feels the plan uncurling in him like a vine from the earth, encircling and choking his heart.

He raps on the door of his chambers, and when a servant answers he bids her summon Fili and Kili, and to admit them only when both are present. Then he returns to where Thranduil, still flushed with frustration and anger, sits feigning concentration over a book of Khuzdul war-poems, from which he has been teaching himself to read the language of Thorin’s fathers.

In the doorway Thorin stands, watching the dusty light fall from the air-shaft onto Thranduil’s shoulders where his cloak has slipped down to rest on the chair-back. For a moment he feels vulnerable, like a penitent seeking absolution; then he crosses his arms and straightens his back, knowing that he nearly fills out the door-frame at his full intimidating stance, and he speaks:

“Do you still ache?”

Thranduil does not look at him, but Thorin sees the fraction by which his shoulders bow, and the way his teeth catch his lower lip. “Yes,” says Thranduil finally.

“Can I trust your promises,” asks Thorin, approaching the table, and Thranduil nods, still not looking at him, but with a low wash of color rising on his exposed collarbones.

Thorin’s chest constricts. He had forgotten this for so long, the anticipation of desired contact, the shameful thrill of power that comes with knowing oneself desired; it has grown in him like a plague, like an inflammation, and now with the piercing knowledge of impending gratification and loss it tightens in his belly like a vice.

“Promise me,” murmurs Thorin, stepping closer until the sunbeam that washes over Thranduil is painting his own torso as well. “Promise me that you will tell me, that you will warn me when to stop.”

Thranduil looks up at him, lips parted with disbelief. “I promise,” he says, and the leap of his throat as he swallows speaks of surrender rather than defiance.

Thorin leans down across the table, framing the book of poetry with his bracing hands, letters and threads of crimson and gold ignored between them as his face draws near to Thranduil’s. The history and poetry of battle lie forgotten; Thranduil’s mouth is open, and so close.

“And promise me,” says Thorin, low and sharp, “that you will serve me by your pleasure, and let me use you as I see fit, as a tool and not merely a toy.”

“I do already,” says Thranduil. There is smoke and pleading in his voice. “I have no choice, have I? If you fall, I fall farther.”

Thorin inhales slowly, exhales in a rush; then he pulls back, standing straight, and says simply: “Follow me.”

Thranduil follows him, leaving the cloak in his seat, beautifully naked; Thorin gestures to the bed, and Thranduil sits on the edge of it, one knee drawn up.

“Spread yourself out,” says Thorin gruffly, watching Thranduil’s obedience with hungry eyes. He does not disrobe; his body is not to be vulnerable, not for this.

When Thranduil is stretched out across the bed, his wrists dangling over the sides and his feet braced in the corners, Thorin nods. “Tell me,” he says, “if this becomes too much, if you must break your promise.” He opens his storage chest, digging through old cloth and battered trophies, and finds a set of aged leather thongs, thin strips with enough give and softness to be bearable.

With them he binds Thranduil, anchoring his wrists to the bedframe, stretching his ankles out as best he can (for Thranduil is very tall, and the bed was meant to be luxurious to a dwarf, not a binding-frame for an elf). The thongs bite into his skin, but not deeply, and Thorin wraps each about his captive’s limbs several times, brushing back the raveling strip of cloth on his one wrist to give the leather more purchase.

He half expects Thranduil to be pale and shaking before he is done; but Thranduil’s breath is steady and deep, and indeed the only change he sees is that (as his hand closes around Thranduil’s ankle, as he allows himself the indulgence of stroking that bizarrely hairless calf) Thranduil’s cock thickens and grows heavier in response to his touch.

“I will be cruel,” warns Thorin. “I will be slow, and I will not listen if you beg.” He bends over the bed, still grasping Thranduil’s ankle, and presses his cheek to Thranduil’s thigh, steeling himself. “But if you can bear it, and if your body does not fail you, I will give you your release.”

Thranduil’s muscles tighten, and Thorin spreads his hand out on the tension of Thranduil’s belly, so different from his own: smooth and hairless and lithe where Thorin’s own is thick and furred and powerful with flesh over muscle. He wonders for a moment if he loves Thranduil most for it, that Thranduil is the opposite of himself, if his passion is born of self-hate.

But time enough to ponder this later. For now, he presses his mouth to skin, he drags his beard across the slope of muscle and tendon to taste the arch of Thranduil’s hipbone. Thranduil’s legs, loosely bound, twist and draw up, and his knees turn toward Thorin, seeking to guide Thorin’s mouth by their own action.

Thorin will have none of it. Just this once, as he prepares himself for the terrible sacrifices he plans, he wants to see Thranduil truly in submission; he wants to feel himself king, master, ruler—if only for the space of a few trembling breaths. Carefully he progresses, fingertips and mouth, climbing half onto the bed as he follows Thranduil’s ribcage with his hands. At last his one hand is resting just beside Thranduil’s cock (now fully hard, and dripping) and his other is holding Thranduil’s face by jaw and chin, twisting his head back so that Thorin can kiss the underside of his throat and taste his jumping pulse.

“Tell me,” Thorin warns, and sinks his teeth into Thranduil’s throat at the junction of his shoulder, and feels the jerk and shudder of his captive lover beneath his overarching body. Still Thranduil does not protest, and his heartbeat is steady; he only moans low in his throat as Thorin torments skin with teeth, biting red marks into his shoulder, giving himself over to his hunger for the span of a few sweet minutes.

When Thranduil’s moans become protests, Thorin takes his straining cock in hand and strokes it, and Thranduil arches his back in combined distress and delight. Still no word of warning; still no creeping cold in Thranduil’s limbs; Thorin works him with increasing abandon, licking the hollow of his collarbone, twisting his head by the ear to expose the pulse-point behind the opposite jaw, straightening up to observe the ruin of bruised skin and thumb the still-untouched tightening nipples.

Thranduil’s eyes are closed tight, his brow drawn into a terrible question, his lips stained dark from the assault of his own teeth. He thinks he will experience nothing more terrible than patience; he thinks Thorin means only to test his endurance of pleasure. Thorin looks on him with a sort of tenderness, a regretful desire, knowing what plan is about to unfurl.

There is a knock at the chamber door. Thranduil startles and twists in his bonds, raising his head to look; the door cracks, and the servant’s voice comes softly in: “Your nephews, my lord.”

Realization leaves Thranduil wide-eyed, scrambling, humiliated; he pulls against the bonds. Thorin pauses in his ministrations and whispers to him: “Will you serve me, or must you go back on your promise?”

Raw distress tightens Thranduil’s countenance, and his mouth falls open. In Thorin’s grasp, he feels Thranduil’s cock softening; but Thranduil’s mouth works for a moment and he whispers in reply: “I will submit, in promise of repayment.”

“A moment,” calls Thorin to the servant, and the door closes. Thranduil lies back upon the bed, breast heaving, obviously struggling to prepare himself for mortification; in his dread, his erection flags, and Thorin sighs at the sight of it.

“No good like this,” Thorin hums, and casts about himself for a moment, then takes up the strip of cloth on Thranduil’s wrist and snaps it free with a single tug.

Then, as Thranduil watches him in growing trepidation, Thorin binds the length of it about Thranduil’s cock and ballocks, pulling it tight, knotting it and wrapping again. It is long enough to bind thoroughly, encircling the root of Thranduil’s cock several times; it is fragile enough that it gives against the pressure of Thranduil’s pulse, but does not allow the blood to return.

Thranduil groans full-heartedly. “What is this,” he begins, and Thorin gives him a half-smile and a stroke, and within moments Thranduil’s length is full and hard and purpled again. The pulse in it feels like a bird trapped in Thorin’s palm.

“Lovely,” murmurs Thorin, and caresses Thranduil’s temple, spider-silk hair catching on his broad fingers as Thranduil bites his lip and gasps for breath. Satisfied with the display he has prepared, Thorin crosses to the door of the chamber and throws it open, greeting his impatient nephews with a nod and beckoning them inside.

They enter; they stop short, Kili stumbling on Fili’s heels, aghast to discover Thranduil lying spread across the bed-ticking with his cock bound and his fists clenched and working in the blankets, and Thorin musing over the spectacle as if examining a painting.  
  
"Uncle—" begins Kili, but Thorin silences him with a look and gestures for both of them to stand across the room, near the fire.  
  
There is real fear in Thranduil's eyes now, and where before he merely gasped and groaned he now is painted with humiliation from breastbone to ears, his breath shallow as a fleeing hare's.   
  
"I thank you, nephews," begins Thorin, "for your fine gift. Difficult to train, certainly, but when I am in a dark mood I enjoy that." He leans over, casually, easily, and strokes a single finger down Thranduil's belly; the sound is rewarding, ripped from Thranduil's throat.  
  
"And," he continues, "I am in a dark mood, and had you not provided me with such a fine outlet for my... frustrations, I might have been less lenient with you both. Until now, that is."  
  
Fili is smiling, as if Thorin's threats are no match for the enjoyment he gains, seeing Thranduil thus tortured. Kili is only staring, hungry, transparently filled with consuming lust.  
  
“You are in disgrace,” announces Thorin finally, turning his back on Thranduil to fix his nephews with his gaze. “You defy me blatantly; you undermine me at every turn. You are both hereby discharged as my heirs.”

Fili draws breath to speak, but Kili interrupts him. “We do not need your blessing to take what we want,” he says, but his eyes are fixed to Thranduil’s body and his voice is unsteady.

“Ah,” retorts Thorin, “but an heir will take the throne so much more easily than a deposed prince, do you not agree? And I do not make this decision final; in fact, I offer each of you the chance to earn back my favor.”

Fili’s attention is piqued; he focuses on his uncle with a distrustful tension. Thorin can see that Kili wants to interrupt him again, to guide his interaction—but each breath from Thranduil’s throat is a shaking hiss, and Kili is transfixed by it, distracted beyond bearing.

“I want Rohan,” says Thorin. “I want Captain Eowyn and her two hundred horses. Whichever one of you brings me this gift will be the next king, with my blessing, and within five years.” In five years, Thorin estimates, the Necromancer will have taken Gondor, and turned his face from the north to drive through the blasted wastes of Mordor to the Haradrim. If Erebor can resist conquest until then, and seems willing to lay quiet while the Necromancer does his work in the south, then the armies that amass in Dol Goldur will be spread across the continent and Erebor may have a chance at routing Mirkwood entirely.

It is a long shot; but long shots are all that remain, and in the bitter depths of his heart Thorin cares more for the survival of his people than for the crown upon his brow. When did he become so hungry for alliance? When did Erebor’s fate begin to hinge upon the politics of men?

“I do not want your throne,” insists Kili in a wooden voice. “It belongs to my brother.”

“Without Rohan,” continues Thorin, ignoring Kili’s protest, “my hand will be forced, and I will be compelled to treat with the Necromancer. My toy here will be, I suspect, the only coin besides surrender that the Necromancer will accept; and I will be loath to give it up. So I tell you this as well: whoever brings me Rohan will have not only my throne, but my concubine.”

Kili wrenches his eyes from Thranduil's trembling body to look at his uncle in disbelief. “You would give me Thranduil,” he says, all protests forgotten.

“And my throne,” acquiesces Thorin.

Fili opens his mouth, but Kili speaks over him, his words coming out in a rush. “You cannot mean it! There is some trick, some trap—look at him! He is _willing_ for you; I would only—I would only kill him.”

Thorin smiles, and leans down, and with one thumb and forefinger he opens Thranduil's mouth; wetting his finger upon Thranduil's tongue, he shrugs at Kili. Fingertip slick with Thranduil’s own saliva, he draws the pad of his finger across the crown of Thranduil's cock. The sounds Thranduil makes in response are impossible, sickening, delicious. The movement of him, the way he bucks, the arch of his back upon the bed-ticking: these things make him irresistible, and Thorin knows it. He has at last found the lever by which Kili may be moved.

“You might keep him alive for a while,” says Thorin. “Surely a king needs patience, and a steady hand. Or have you not these things?”

Fili begins to speak again, and Kili once again speaks over him: “I have—”

But Fili is done being ignored. “What do I want with an elf-slave,” he roars. “Kili! Will you sell my crown for a sniveling tree-beast’s cock? What witchery has come over you?”

Kili shrinks back, abashed, caught between his desires and his feigned loyalty; Fili turns his back on his brother in his fury, and bows to Thorin with his temper scarcely contained. “Keep your elf-thing,” he spits. “I will have my throne.”

“And if you do not want him,” smirks Thorin, “I will simply… dispose of him, and enjoy him to the last.” Kili chokes, and Thorin adds: “Even a fallen king is valuable, if traded with the right enemy. Thranduil must belong to the king, or he will be used to undermine the throne.”

Fili throws a black look at his brother, and Kili backs toward the door.

“But no matter,” says Thorin. “You have the ear of Rohan’s diplomat, do you not, Fili? You shall have your choice of throne and slave, if you serve your king well," and with this waves them both out of the room, and turns his face back to his writhing captive with a rush of bitter triumph. His nephews depart, and Thorin hears the fighting begin before the door has even closed.

But the victory is hollow. Even as Thorin returns to Thranduil’s body, murmuring praise, tormenting him with light touches—even as he leans over him and kisses his throat and his collarbones, the ache in his heart grows. Thranduil shudders and groans as he always has, but he twists away from Thorin's touch, rather than toward it, and to his horror Thorin sees tears welling in his eyes.  
  
He should be fierce, proud, exonerated; but Thorin feels sick, cold, nauseated with guilt. “You should have spoken,” he says, and tears the raveling strip of cloth with a jerk that makes Thranduil’s whole body convulse. “You served me well,” he adds, reminding himself more than Thranduil of their bargain, wanting to believe that he has only done his duty as a king.

“I served you well,” echoes Thranduil bitterly, as Thorin unbinds him, and Thorin allows himself a surge of anger, that Thranduil holds this against him—is Thorin not trying only to protect him? Is he not preparing to sacrifice his kingship to keep Thranduil alive? A moment later Thranduil is pulling him down, long arms wrapping about his shoulders and sides, legs drawing him in until Thorin's cock is riding beside Thranduil's and the pressure of skin is almost as great as the pressure of guilt.  
  
Thorin can hardly see for conviction, for lust, for rage; he wants to bite, to claw, to fuck the tears out of Thranduil's eyes and the breath from his body. He tears his own clothes away, bites at Thranduil's shoulder and ruts against his belly with wild abandon, with mad uncaring, wanting only to erase—to forget—to escape the pain—  
  
Which is, he realizes, what Thranduil also means to do. Despite the heat of Thorin’s body pressing upon his own, Thranduil’s skin is chilling, and Thorin realizes that Thranduil is forcing his arms to go slack against his sides, shaking under Thorin’s weight, still struggling to keep his legs spread. "You tempt me to your death," says Thorin, viciously, still riding him, feeling how Thranduil's cock jumps between them.  
  
"I would rather die than be given to him," says Thranduil, in a tight voice with honey under the pain, arousal and death-wish together. "I would rather have your cock in me, and pretend you will protect me, and die believing it."  
  
Something is happening in Thorin's chest, something like a mace-blow against his heart, something that boils up in his throat and escapes and  _oh_  he is weeping, he is sobbing, he is cursing and pouring out his heart and he cannot, he  _cannot_. If Thranduil dies he will die a moment later, he is certain, whether by the mercy of Mahal or by his own dagger.   
  
He cannot live without Thranduil, who is killing him, who he must someday relinquish or kill in turn.

And Thranduil is growing cold under him, striving to conceal his own swiftening weakness, refusing to speak up even though something has changed between them. Earlier Thorin could touch him with purpose, offer him climax, kiss and bite him, and Thranduil’s skin was warm; now his guard is up, and Thorin has no doubt that Thranduil intends to break his promise by holding his silence rather than calling out surrender.

“Tell me to stop,” he hisses; he wants it to be aggression, power, triumph, but instead he is only begging Thranduil to keep his word, to prove that he can be trusted. “ _Tell me,_ ” he insists, but even though Thorin has stilled his weight and is already shifting away, Thranduil bites his lip and shakes his head and closes his eyes to hide their vacant glass.

When Thranduil’s voice finally escapes him, it is so weak and shallow that Thorin despairs and thinks him already lost. “What difference does it make,” he gasps, “if you give me to the Necromancer with your own hands or with your nephews’? Either way I would rather die here than in the pit.”

"I will not give you to either of them," says Thorin, rolling from Thranduil's body to lie beside him, to curl around him, to apologize with hot breath and a crushing embrace and shameful tears. "I need them distracted; and theirs is a fool’s errand, mark my words. That diplomat is an imbecile and a drunkard, and Fili too arrogant to see it, lest he admit he has succumbed to flattery. And Kili… Kili knows he cannot secure his throne without Fili as a crutch.”

The shivering in Thranduil’s limbs is easing. “You might have warned me,” he murmurs bitterly. “Surely you know by now that my body is yours for the taking, but they—they are a different matter.”

“Mine for the taking,” echoes Thorin, unable to keep the thick bitter edge of his weeping from his voice. “When you turn pale and fainting even while begging for my cock, you mean?”

“Not from your touch,” begins Thranduil, hesitates, carries on: “Kili especially—the way he looks at me, Thorin, I think if he wins me I will die quickly before the Necromancer knows I am here, however often he has begged you to sell me to Dol Goldur.”

“Fili is the only one of them foolish enough to believe the Necromancer’s lies,” Thorin retorts, unthinking. “Kili only wants to sell you to—”

Thorin realizes the secret he was about to tell. He chokes on his words, burying his face against the back of Thranduil’s shoulder in a crushing embrace.

“To whom,” says Thranduil, his hand clasping over Thorin’s upon his breast. His heartbeat is still racing; he is struggling to control his voice, to appear calm while his body is burning.

“I have kept a secret from you,” says Thorin, the words escaping him in a torrent. He cannot stop himself; he knows, and he aches from it, that Thranduil will not keep his promises if he finds a way to escape. And yet he cannot hold back the secret any longer. “There are elves,” he says, strained and broken, “elves of Mirkwood, gathered within two days’ ride on a swift pony. Kili wanted me to give you to them—to hold you hostage. He has never been sympathetic to the Necromancer.”

Thranduil goes still in his arms, his back rigid. “Elves of Mirkwood,” he repeats, testing the words in his mouth. After a moment he reaches his conclusion: “You will hold me over their head, and take them as your indentured warriors?”

“That was Kili’s plan,” murmurs Thorin. “I find that I have no stomach for it, myself. When the five years are done, I will send word, and have you rescued before my nephews can claim you.”

“Five years is a long time,” Thranduil says after a moment, and Thorin hears the shake of his voice and understands the effort Thranduil is expending to maintain his composure, to defy hope. “Your assets will grow thin, and your position brittle, and you will give me up in the end, or your kingdom will be lost.”  
  
"Perhaps," whispers Thorin into the tense muscle of his back, "but I think in the end the Necromancer will have it anyway," and after this silence reigns in their bedchamber for the rest of the afternoon, thick as the shadows of Mirkwood and heavy with sorrow to come.


	9. Chapter 9

After this Thorin cannot hide from himself any longer. He has changed; once he was a strong king, ready for centuries of dominion and wealth, and now he is within a moment’s weakness of being destroyed by his own kin, and is bargaining with his lover’s life for a few more years of power.

Has he not hoped for salvation from Thranduil before? Did his heart not leap at the distant antlered shadow on the ridge, and dream of being rescued? He had imagined for a moment fighting the dragon alongside Thranduil’s quicksilver wrath—when, in fact, it was his own small foolish self that must be a savior, rescuing such a small number, being in his youth perhaps one-third the hero his people needed. 

And in the shadow of Mirkwood, when Bilbo disappeared and took with him all the light Thorin had found in his exile. The dark forest had turned darker; unspeakable things had stalked them through the trees, toyed with them, eaten them. Once again, lying under a tree-bank and gasping for breath, Thorin had seen the elk-shape (this time milk-white, glowing, attended by armed and fleet-footed elves) and called out for Thranduil; he had been once more that foolish prince wishing for rescue, and once again Thranduil had failed him.  
  
Both times, he understood in his head, might be excused: could a delegation of two hundred elves fight a dragon? And was not Mirkwood crumbling about them, the elves fighting for their lives and their kingdom as the Necromancer chose that  _exact moment_ to move, after so long—  
  
It occurs to Thorin, distantly, that when Bilbo vanished, things went terribly wrong, and he wonders if the two are related—  
  
But his mind turns away, changing again as it always does, as he now realizes he is changed yet again. He wants to hate; he had so hoped to end his sorrows in a kingly move, to neutralize Fili and Kili before they toppled his throne while using Thranduil as the game-piece, as the victim of his vengeance, that he had for so long wished him to be.  
  
Now, as he stares into his water-glass, once again distracted from council, and all he can see is the despair on Thranduil's face, the pain Thorin has brought him, which Thorin somehow feels as his own. He is losing a war that has yet to be declared, and all he cares about is the fate of his enemy.  _Agriculture,_  says the yellow-bearded dwarf across the table,  _is the backbone of... the slope-side farmers demand... superstitious, but must be pacified... could hardly be a dragon..._  
  
None of this matters. Or, perhaps, it is of dire import, and he is too distracted to think. "A dragon," he echoes, because that word has sunk through, but the dwarf explains that the farmers are a backward and paranoid lot from living so long on the surface, and a detail of trained guards should make the rumors of cloud-shadows die down... tiresome, the sort of thing that should be handled by his generals, and at any rate he is lost yet again in spinning conflict with himself, wondering where his burning hate has gone.  
  
It is not until the council ends, and Thorin is returning to his chambers, that he allows himself to recall what it is that he knows and no other has yet guessed. For he, starving and ragged, leaving behind his few remaining companions, had descended into Erebor to die. Gaunt, fueled only by his longing for vengeance, had made his way to the dragon's hoard; and there upon the mounds of gold had been naught but the still-warm impression of the dragon's belly, and the places where its feet had scrabbled in the coins.  
  
Tales were still told of his victory, how the great wurm fled to die in the wilderness alone, smitten on its brow and in its throat with Thorin's blade. Certainly it had been seen flying over Laketown, fast and high, never to be seen again; and certainly if it still breathed it would have returned for its hoard and its revenge.  
  
There is no way to guess where Smaug now rests; but Thorin alone, in all Middle-Earth, now knows that Smaug still lives.  
  
He is cold to his bones when he creeps into the bed beside Thranduil, and very glad for Thranduil's hands to stroke his hair while he broods in silence and fear.

 

* * *

 

 

It seems to Thorin at first that the danger of his nephews' power-madness is broken. Kili manages a few grudging conversations with the beery, laughing diplomat of the Rohirrim, then retreats to the library for days at a time. Fili is merely quiet, and avoids Thorin entirely.

But after two weeks of silence from both of them, Thorin is curious; and there is only one person whose counsel they both seek. He makes time to visit with Heorhod in person, and discovers that for all his loud voice and enormous feet, the man keeps a rein on his tongue.

“My nephews,” says Thorin, sipping his almost untouched beer, “are pursuing a task for me. I trust Fili has already told you about it?”

Heorhod scratches at the back of his neck, and Thorin can see him considering the proper answer. An hour ago, he would have expected the man to spew answers in a drunken rush; now, after surprisingly pleasant conversation that has told Thorin exactly nothing, he is reduced to straight questioning.

After a moment of bleary consideration, Heorhod looks down into his beer. “The lady captain, isn’t it? Fili says whoever brings her to your side wins the throne. Brave of you, I’ll say; she’s lovely, but I’ve seen her gut a man in single combat. Perhaps not one for the bridal chamber, eh?”

“I do not mean to wed her,” says Thorin, appalled. “She is exiled, and needs a place to gather her strength; I have land and coin, and need horses to guard my borders. Surely we might have an alliance, if she changes her mind.”

“Ah, well,” says Heorhod with a shrug. “That one will be slow to hear reason, m’lord.” He does not elaborate until Thorin prompts him, then shrugs again. “She was not exiled for daydreaming,” he adds, and Thorin grits his teeth.

“A coup, then,” he hazards, trying to sound nonchalant. Experience has taught him that people will correct a wrong guess, if it is confidently given; but Heorhod does not rise to the bait, only grimacing and taking another drink.

“You’ll understand,” he says at last, “if I don’t discuss the business of my king and his family so freely. M’lord,” he adds hastily, and then ventures: “She’s stubborn and contrary, goes about with a chip on her shoulder, so to speak. Does as she pleases.”

Thorin frowns. “And yet she turned her back on my offer, choosing loyalty over gain and glory,” he muses.

“Well,” says Heorhod, then takes a drink and says nothing else to clarify.

“And she spoke of her brother,” Thorin adds, when it becomes apparent that Heorhod will say nothing else. “She mentioned his illness, as if it had some bearing on her choice.”

For the first time, Heorhod seems to pay real attention; his back stiffens minutely, and his fingers work subtly against the handle of his mug. “Some folk are more loyal to their family than to their king,” he evades, and plunges onward: “Like your Fili, for instance—a good fellow, maybe a little ambitious, but of course he’ll choose family over greed.”

Thorin doesn’t believe a word of it. “Of course,” he says.

Heorhod looks into his beer, and his eyes shift and then narrow. “I suppose his brother is loyal as well,” he says, too casually to sound natural. “For him to be sending messages to elves, demanding that they send him their archers—I guess he’s building an army for you, even if he can’t convince Rohan to join your side.”

Elves? Mirkwood elves? For Heorhod to mention something so extraordinary and give it such a thin veneer of approval—this is an obvious backstab. Well, of course; Heorhod supports Fili.

“Messages to elves,” repeats Thorin. “Hmmm. Well, make sure that Fili knows my offer still stands: if he can bring me Eowyn and her horses, whether she brings an alliance with Rohan or merely the might she carries with her, the prize is his to take.”

With this he rises and departs, leaving Heorhod to drowse into his beer. A drunken fool; but a careful speaker. Thorin shakes his head.

Kili has sent messages, has he? Thorin can guess at their content, and terror mixes with anger in his belly. He means to force Thorin’s hand; he means to have Thorin either humiliated in public by having Thranduil stripped from him, or to turn military force on his uncle, and take the throne he cannot win by rights.

 

* * *

 

 

Thorin goes straight from the tavern where Heorhod drinks to the palace quarter, finds his way to Kili’s door, and hammers on it.

When the door opens, Thorin simply pushes inside, not waiting for an invitation; Kili crosses his arms and stands back, leaving the door open, his offense written across his features clearly. “What brings you so graciously to my door, Uncle,” asks Kili with razor-edged brightness.

Thorin wants to hit him for his smug nonchalance. “You have defied me openly,” he says, struggling to control himself, feeling his voice rise to a shout. “You have ridiculed me to my own council and you have undermined me at _every_ turn, and now—” He catches himself, checks himself; the door is still open, and his throat is stinging from the force of his rage. “Now you will go behind my back and broker a deal with elves, against my express command, no doubt offering them my own possession as your coin?”

The effort of keeping his voice in check makes Thorin feel as if he is one step from frothing at the mouth. Kili uncrosses his arms and creases his brow, every inch the maligned innocent.

“Elves,” he says, sounding injured. “What are you accusing me of? I’ve had no dealings with elves.”

“Do you think I am entirely blind,” roars Thorin, advancing on his nephew. “Did you think that drunkard would keep your secrets?”

“Drunkard,” repeats Kili. “Heorhod, the diplomat? Has he turned his hand from corrupting your heir to outright slandering his rivals?” He sounds vicious, threatened. “As I said, Uncle, I’ve had nothing to do with elves; if you recall, I’ve had other tasks on my mind.”

Thorin’s wrath recedes a little. “Heorhod has no reason to know about elves,” he says uneasily, “nor to bait me with it, expecting me to respond in anger.”

Kili’s brows rise, then flatten in tight loathing. “That _drunkard_ has played you for an old fool,” he says. “I’ve spoken with him—he is Rohirrim, after all—but even if I _had_ betrayed you to a lot of elves with nothing to give them but words, I’d hardly have told that treasure-grubbing puppeteer about it. Which,” he adds, “makes me the cleverest of the line of Durin at this point, since you were stupid enough to believe a _man_ and let him turn your kin to monsters in front of your eyes, and Fili is apparently so stupid he prefers to blackmail elves than to wait five years to snatch the throne, even with Rohan’s diplomat in his pocket.”

“Will you tell me,” growls Thorin, “that Fili is not your lap-dog, when you command him so easily?”

Kili uncrosses his arms, clenches his fists. “I did, once,” he admits. “Before… all this, I would not have needed the throne for myself; I could have had my brother’s crown and seal for myself, for the asking, for the _suggestion_. But now… now his warlike nature has turned to bloodthirst, and his ambition to cruelty, and he hears nothing I say! And you let this happen!”

“And what do you need a throne for,” scoffs Thorin. “You say I should have kept your brother from the _wicked corruptions_ of a provincial clod with a brawler’s nose—could you not maintain control of your brother, you who would be king?”

A brief silence falls; Kili’s jaw works, and torchlight glistens in his eyes. “Better to be king than to hope for the king’s regard,” he hisses at last.

“Oh, and you would be content with mere regard,” mocks Thorin, the taste of blood in his mouth. “You are as greedy as your brother—you could have had decades of luxury, a prince’s splendor, even the honor of the Iron Hills when Dain’s spawn is dead. Why could you not be satisfied with that? Why are you so _unhappy_?”

Turning his head, Kili grits his teeth. “I am not unhappy,” he insists. “I am _determined_. I only want what anyone would want, in my position, and I will be content when it is mine.” His countenance is bitter is bile.

Thorin turns away, pacing off the pressure of his anger. “If your brother is truly making his bid for my throne,” he says, “then you had best give me whatever support you can. Fili’s first action as king, I suspect, would be to sell us to the Necromancer for a fistful of gems.”

Kili takes a deep breath. “Name me your heir,” he says, “and I will support you to the depths of the earth.”

Tempting, so tempting. Thorin considers it, and lets Kili see him consider it, lets Kili watch on his face how his favor shifts, lets Kili imagine how it would feel to win Erebor so easily. At last he speaks, choosing his words with care: “Your brother has many supporters—enough to threaten my throne, enough to tip the crown from your head if I gave it to you. And he pursues the goal I set for you both; shall I deny him, and watch him plunge into open rebellion, if he succeeds?”

“Would _you_ hand us over to the Necromancer for the price of a few horses,” says Kili skeptically.

“Fili loathes the Rohirrim,” reasons Thorin. “Even with Heorhod at his side, he will be months, even years in the process of winning them—time enough for me to steal away his supporters and hamstring his claim, time enough for you to build your own strength and prepare for the crown. Support me until then, and I will name you my heir when he falls.”

He does not like it, but Kili knows sound politics when he hears them, and finally he offers a grudging nod. “We shall call this a truce,” he says, “for the moment. And will you hold your promise to me, if I succeed before my brother in winning Rohan’s outcasts?”

Thorin laughs, a sharp derisive sound that makes Kili wince. “Your brother at least has Heorhod,” he says. “What will you offer the captain that I cannot?”

“Heorhod has his price,” says Kili grimly. “He is more than he seems, and holds more influence than you seem to realize—did you see how the lady captain’s eyes sought him out, when she wanted to accept your offer? He is hungry for treasure, for a prize; and I think I can give it to him.”

With a shrug, Thorin strokes his beard, thinking back to his audience with Rohan, trying to piece together the clues. “Do as you will,” he says, “as long as you keep your brother from unleashing the Necromancer’s madness on Erebor, and I will keep you in my regard.”

“Don’t for a moment imagine,” says Kili in a hollow brittle tone, “that I do this for your approval. I will have your throne, Uncle, and I will have the elf as well; I do not need your permission. I do not need your regard.”

With this, Kili throws open the door and storms out, and Thorin is left standing alone in the echo of Kili’s defiance.

 

* * *

Late into the evening Thorin sits in his chair, pondering the events of the day. The potential of Kili’s support gives him the first hope he has dared keep for some time; he has finally bought himself some time to act, and the simmering war in the house of Durin is no longer to be fought on two fronts.

Only… if Fili is making his move, why should he imagine that Kili will stay his hand for the promise of a distant throne? Why should Kili wait for his brother to strengthen his support in response? Five years is an eternity in politics.

Thorin’s heart sinks as he realizes how tenuous a negotiation he has settled.

And worse… Thorin steals a glance at Thranduil, who lounges on the bed with a book, crushing his silk wrap and unconsciously rubbing his shin with his heel. Thorin remembers when that silk was the only protection Thranduil trusted, when the bed offered him nothing but fear, and his throat clenches painfully.

He may have years yet to rule; he may have months. He owes Thranduil so much more than this.

His hands close into fists and open again; he flicks his fingertips against each other, scratches his palms, rubs his throat. The disquiet energy of indecision is like a volcano in his chest, a rushing deadly cloud of ash. If he chooses, if he is wrong—

If there is one thing he has learned in his time as king, it is the killing power of an unmade decision. He weighs his options against each other: to gamble, and keep Thranduil at his side, and risk his enemy-lover’s death or torture? Or to take a shorter risk, and break his own heart, and hope to deliver Thranduil to safety before Erebor falls to its own?

It occurs to him that if Kili loses his chance to win Thranduil, he will not deal mercifully with Thorin when the time comes. But then he can hardly behead an abdicating king, can he? Not without stirring an uproar that will cost him his rule?

At any rate, if Fili has already contacted Mirkwood, Thorin’s hand is forced. His only hope now is to convince the elves to come to _his_ aid instead of his nephew’s. Rohan’s horses are, perhaps, the key to protecting Erebor; Mirkwood’s longbows may prove the key to ruling it.

But oh, the price…

“Give me a lock of your hair,” says Thorin into the still air, and bites his cheek to steady himself.

Thranduil raises an eyebrow at him. “A lover’s token,” he says, with amusement in his tone, but Thorin shakes his head.

“Proof,” he says, “that you are my prisoner and not my nephew’s, if… anything should befall.”

The stress in his voice draws Thranduil’s close attention, and the elf watches him for a long minute, brows lowered, considering. Finally Thorin adds: “I will cut it for you, if you like. Where it does not show.”

In response, Thranduil lifts his hand to the nape of his neck and, without any plucking motion that Thorin can see, returns with a thin ribbon of hair as perfectly white and undisturbed as the rest of it. The roots are still intact. 

If Thorin pulled out a hair from his head, he would bleed. He has seen humans pulling hair in fights, seen barmaids rip out hanks of hair from the heads of human drunkards, and he understands that not all races are as well-attached to their hair as dwarves; but if there was any pain or resistance at all, Thranduil did not show it, and Thorin knows his hair does not fall so easily.

For Thorin has pulled that hair, and got nothing for it but an ache of frustration and a tingling silky memory on his fingers; while now Thranduil braids a small circle to be given as a token, seamless and slender, too small for a bracelet and too big for an elven finger, though as Thorin takes it from him he reflects that it would fit his thumb very well.

Thorin holds the braided ring for a moment; it cools between his fingers. Then, with a sigh, he puts it in his pocket.

Thranduil reaches out and takes him by the wrist as he does so, and holds him there for a moment, thumb digging into the space between Thorin’s tendons, long fingers binding the thick hair of Thorin’s forearm in a gesture of unspoken intensity. He meets Thranduil’s eyes, and sees the shadow that wells up in them, the determination that holds his mask intact and the tightness of muscle beneath the skin.

Then Thranduil releases him, still without speaking, and Thorin rubs at his wrist as he turns to leave the room with his token of possession and his twisting, guilty heart.

 

* * *

 

A scout, bribed for secrecy and ignorant of his burden’s provenance, carries the message away before dawn. Thorin, cloaked and hooded, meets him before his departure on the high railing of a bridge in the city outside the gate, instructing him to move with utmost care as he seeks out the Mirkwood elves. From his vantage point, Thorin watches the dwarf ride out, descending the switchbacks of the quiet streets on his pony in the thickening drizzle of winter rain.

It occurs to him, as he looks out into the low purple sky with its rain-bellies diffusing city light, that Thranduil has no way to know where the message is going, who may be the recipient of his gift. Thorin remembers the press of his fingertips, and tries to see the wooded horizon through the slow cold haze, and wonders if Thranduil trusts him.

 

* * *

 

By sunrise, Kili is gone. Word reaches Thorin as he and Thranduil are breaking their fast on dried apples and winter-wheat loaf, and the food turns to gravel in Thorin’s mouth as he hears it.

Heorhod has gone too.

A furious search turns up only one clue: a sheet of ripped parchment on Kili’s desk, which reads in his straightforward script: _Remember your promise_. As word spreads, dwarves throughout the city whisper of a secret lover, but Thorin knows the truth, and his blood runs cold.

Fili storms about the palace in a frenzy of rage and betrayal, kicking at servants and smashing furniture; at first Thorin fears that he will descend into a bloodbath, and orders him carefully watched by guards, but the cruelty and knife-twisting sadism he has displayed so lately seems to have dissolved into honest distress. “How could he leave me,” Fili roars, and Thorin wonders which _he_ Fili means.

His head aches by midafternoon; Thorin instructs Thranduil to bar the door while he is alone, and then he takes himself out to wander the deeper places of Erebor, to think in silence.

An hour passes, then two; his feet carry him down familiar passages, over bridges in the deep and through vaulted stairwells. At last he stands in a place he knows well, and wonders that it did not draw him more quickly, as it always does. Indeed, he seems to have come here from habit alone; the usual lure of greed and guilt is missing, exorcised from his spirit.

The sliding door is half open, and beyond it the darkness is pierced with a shaft of early light. There is a flickering torch in its sconce, which is strange, as Thorin usually carries his own; he steps over the threshold with utmost care, peering about the rock-shelf with a frown.

The pool is undisturbed, lovely and mirrored as ever, the ghost-shapes of calcified time pristine on its floor. The shaft of light falls into the dismaying chasm as it always has; the air is cold and clear and unstirring. Thorin is alone.

But the heap of bones, the undignified tomb of his kin, has been disturbed. Tatters of cloth and dry sinew lie scattered about as if kicked; jewels and skulls have rolled even to the edge of the narrow shelf, and Thorin sees that some parts must have fallen, and cold horror sinks into his soul.

The glint of gold holds no allure. The bones are enough on their own to fill Thorin with revulsion and pity; there is no need for guilt to hold his darker urges at bay. Quiet as a sunset, some burning pressure has gone out of his life, and Thorin has no idea what it might be.

Kili, who sought to secure his throne, is gone; Heorhod, who sought some unnamed treasure, is gone as well. Thorin rubs his face with both hands, looks over the edge, takes a deep nauseated breath. He feels the shape of some terrible happening, though he cannot see it, and as he pads silently from the desecrated tomb of the starved, he hopes that whatever treasure Kili stole to buy Heorhod’s aid is worth the hope of Rohan’s horses and the fall of Thorin’s throne.


	10. Chapter 10

With no one about to whisper in his ears, Fili falls into a strange peace. He still spars with the guards and soldiers, but the cruelty that bloodied his blade is missing; he still snipes at his uncle with spiteful glances at supper, but his drive for the throne has stilled for the time being.

Thorin lets himself imagine, though with great care and skepticism, that he has earned himself a lull in the nightmare of throne-keeping. He arranges for bribes to find pockets, for potential supporters to find private invitations, for special dispensations to squeeze some throats and strike others’ chains. It is exhausting work, all the worse for the necessity of appearing gregarious and confident when he is half the time shaking with the weariness of haste.

Nor does he find relief in his own chambers, the only place where he gives himself permission to breathe; where he lies in his own bed, surrounded by the scent of Thranduil’s hair and filled with the heavy, burning frustration of a dilemma no clever statecraft may solve: the treachery and madness of his own body, which is as ever wracked by longing, and is only made more wretched by the small words and tenderness that pass between him and his captive as they carefully do not touch in any of the ways they most want.

 

* * *

 

 

Three weeks later, his men intercept the elves’ reply to Fili. Thorin stands in a carpeted anteroom in the small hours of the morning, the weight of his sleep-bruised eyes reminding him of his age, while Fili’s messenger kneels trembling on the carpet, preparing himself for death.

“I cannot say,” whispers the messenger, white in the face and hoarse as if already hanged.

Thorin is impressed. For Fili to have such a choke-hold on his correspondence—for him to have such lowly servants who are loyal in the face of torture—he must have assembled a great deal of influence. He crouches down, until the only thing preventing eye contact between himself and the messenger is the latter’s determination to stare at the floor.

“Look at me, boy,” says Thorin. “I know what message you carried; the ground is already falling from under your master’s feet. You need not fall with him. You may pass your message on when you have told me what the elves had to say, and you may tell Fili that we spoke, or you may hold your tongue, however you deem wisest.” Of course the messenger will hold his tongue; if he is so unwilling to speak now, Fili must have some mighty lever against him, a family under threat or a secret of potential ruin, and he will not risk having that lever moved.

The messenger lifts his eyebrows plaintively, even manages to look up as far as Thorin’s mouth; then his nerve fails him entirely and he curls inward, shaking his head. “I dare not,” he chokes.

Thorin sees how he struggles to be brave, how determined he is to sacrifice himself, and takes a gamble on his guess. “They will be safer in the Iron Hills,” he says, “under my protection, with gold in their purses to boot. You may buy them that safety, and my nephew will be none the wiser.”

Now the messenger finds a reserve of courage, and meets Thorin’s gaze at last. “May I go with them,” he says, and Thorin sees his determination break.

“After a while,” says Thorin, who knows how these things work. “Better for them to pretend they’re visiting family. When they are safe you may join them freely.”

The messenger swallows; he is so young that his beard does not entirely obscure the bob of his throat.  “Very well,” he says. “If you are a merciful king, have mercy on us. The elves number over three hundred; their settlement is larger than I was told, and they say they will be here one month from now, to—” Here his voice almost fails, and Thorin leans close to hear his words: “To take back their king.”

“Ah,” says Thorin, mouth gone dry. Over _three hundred_. Such a force of elves, armed with longbows that can stop cavalry charges, armed with knives and swords and elvish stealth—how can Thorin hope to stop them? How can Fili protect himself, if he takes the kingdom and the elves decide they want their share?

He shakes himself out of his reverie and claps the messenger lad on the shoulder. “You have done your city a great service,” he says. “My nephew plays with forces he cannot control, and threatens us all with his folly. Go and deliver your message, and my men here will guard your family until morning, and see them on their way after sunrise.”

The lad bolts before Thorin is quite finished speaking, and Thorin watches him go, rubbing the exhaustion from his face with his hands, feeling the tangle of his beard with his palms. Three hundred elves. Fili has doomed them all, unless Mirkwood has forgotten its greed in the intervening years.

 

* * *

 

Filled with this awful knowledge, and half blind with weariness, Thorin brings himself back to his chambers at a half-stumble, tells the servants to leave food at his door, and enters to find Thranduil sitting cross-legged on the rug before the fireplace, staring as if from a window. Fire-gold glints from Thranduil’s hair and turns it into a mockery of flame, licks at his flesh, chases shadows across the dells and ridges of his collarbones and throat. 

Thorin kneels and reaches for him, unable to speak, desperate for the comfort of skin against skin. Thranduil falls back against him, hearing the sorrow in the hitch of Thorin's breath, and Thorin picks him up and bears him like a bride to his bed and lays him down, the fire-warmed skin like a brand against his flesh.  
  
And Thranduil lets him, twining his arms about Thorin’s neck and shoulders, eyes questioning; when Thorin climbs into the bed beside him and stretches his arm across in an embrace, Thranduil turns to regard him, taking in the worry and weariness on his face.

Then Thranduil kisses him.

Tentatively at first, gently, with sympathy rather than passion; it is still sweeter than anything Thorin has hoped to feel again, and the full softness of Thranduil’s lips is a balm to the hitch in Thorin’s breath and the twisting ache in his throat. Thranduil’s fingers weave into his hair, fingertips following the shape of his scalp, and Thorin’s mouth tightens against the kiss, holding back what rises in his breast.

Months of betrayal and isolation have hardened him; seasons of Thranduil’s presence fearful and disapproving in his chambers have put a shell of ice about his heart. Thorin is horrified to discover that where hardship has not broken him, the simplicity of Thranduil’s mouth and cradling arms threatens to undo his strength entirely. He is coming apart under the burden of compassion and he does not even have the dignity to care.

So he kisses back. And Thranduil lets him, not flinching even when Thorin's kisses upon his throat turn to gentle bites, not drawing back when Thorin sets his mouth along the slope of Thranduil's cheek and breathes across his ear. But as Thorin's hands roam lower, and Thranduil's body responds to the touch, Thranduil at last begins to twist under him, resisting.

When Thranduil actually pushes him away, gentle with a strange reluctance, Thorin draws back, bewildered. "Do you not want this," he says—how much he has changed, that this matters to him now.  
  
"I... you said that you wished to have me rescued," says Thranduil, not quite meeting his eyes. "Perhaps I am a fool, but I would see the stars again before I die, and I cannot—I find that I cannot control myself, with you.”

It is too much, to find him so careful now, where before he rutted into Thorin’s mouth with such disregard for his own life. “You swore to me,” says Thorin, struggling to keep his voice steady, “that your body would allow it; that you wanted me, and that wanting would protect you.”

Thranduil looks away, and Thorin sees the uncertainty on his face. “For… for us, the act is a bond,” he says, “and I have… have bonded once, before. Even if we met freely, if nothing lay between us but delight, the process would be—tricky. And here, where I question my safety and am at best coerced, what I want and what I am willing to do are not always the same.”

“How can you want, and not be willing,” asks Thorin; he reaches out his hand and lets it linger over Thranduil’s body, touches the skin and finds it receptive, wonders how Thranduil can warm so easily to his touch and still not be ready for true heat.

“Like this,” says Thranduil, mournfully, and with his hand he presses Thorin’s hand to his breast, lets Thorin feel the living pulse of his heart beneath his ribs, and kisses Thorin again.

It will have to be enough. Thorin imagines the softness of Thranduil’s flesh, the yielding of his body, the stark wantonness of his arousal, and wants more than soft kisses and Thranduil’s thumb pressing against his cheekbone as the elf’s palm presses to his face. But he also sees in his mind’s eye the gold-rimed outline of Thranduil’s face against the firelight, his strange smooth countenance in which pain has become a quiet guest who lingers in the corners, in which the sorrow and despair of their futile efforts against the Dark are only varnish over centuries of conflict and regret; and he is content to kiss, and find comfort, and offer what comfort he may in return.

He will die with his longing unfulfilled, like as not, in a coup or a battle. But he will die knowing that Thranduil, like Smaug and the Necromancer and the White Orc who now rules Gundabad, like all his old enemies he once swore to destroy, still lives.  
  
So he lies beside his captive, and he lets Thranduil lie in his arms and checks his own hungry hands, and he breathes in the scent of woodsmoke and wet leaves from Thranduil's hair, and remembers a Mirkwood he never knew.

And like this, with days of preparation for war, with nights of aching sorrow and bitter longing, the weeks pass, and the moon turns in the heavens, and the month of waiting wanes.

 

* * *

 

The first hint of change is a rumor, a whisper that Thorin does not hear until after he sees Fili's brows knit in distrust and wrath over the dinner table. Beside Fili, the empty chair where his brother once sat is a strange complement to this new expression, the unusual gravity in Fili's face—for without his brother at his side, without Heorhod to give him even drunken human advice, Fili must ponder his own politics, and find his own sources of rumor.

Thorin makes certain to find the rumor within a matter of hours, and discovers that the army of elves, which scouts have followed in their slow progress, has called a quarantine and camped, no more than a day's ride away on a swift horse. There are whispers of plague.

If Fili is not suspicious, he is a fool; but Thorin has more information, and thus the rumor is more significant to him, and more painful. A month’s travel is believable for a human or a dwarven army on the move out of Mirkwood; for elves, with no horses to supply and no heavy armor to carry and no need for wain-borne pavilions of war, Thorin would expect their arrival within two weeks.

They are obviously stalling for time, as they have been stalling all along. A wise move, of which Thorin approves; but with any number of possible motives, which sets Thorin’s teeth on edge. He can only hope that his own messenger reached them safely, and that they hesitate now because they think to rescue Thranduil without needing to fight. Only… why would they hesitate, when they could take him and be gone?

 _He is yours to take_ , Thorin recites from his memory, remembering the braided loop of hair and the rolled parchment inserted through it.  _At noontide each seventh day the south-slope farmers bring their barrels to the granaries; conceal yourself and you will be brought into Erebor unseen._  

And because Fili and Kili are not the only fools of the line of Durin, Thorin had even sketched a hasty map from the store-rooms to his own chambers.

It is possible that Lake-Men or orcs caught his messenger, and will murder him in his bed; but now, with this rumor of a halted army ringing in his ears, Thorin knows why they have stopped, and knows that there is no plague. He looks at Thranduil, who curls in the great chair before the hearth, staring into the fire; he watches the light play across his white skin, his shin where it slips from beneath the cloak, and he imagines that the flicker and curl of gold is the warmth and shadow of the sun and the clouds, and he knows his days are numbered and does not care.

The first seven-day stretch passes, and there is no rescue attempt. Thorin grinds his teeth, but he knows better than to expect a rescue so quickly. Thranduil is a torment to him still, but already he has begun to force himself to withdraw—he turns when Thranduil touches him, he lets his broad back be his shield against that warm and sinuous flesh—and he tells himself he does not notice the hurt in Thranduil's face.

He cannot even bring himself to pretend that he  _desires_  the hurt in Thranduil's face.

And at last Thranduil snakes his long and powerful arm around Thranduil's side, his hand slides up across Thorin's chest, and Thorin feels Thranduil's mouth move beside his ear:  _Great must be your burden, king under the mountain, if you have forgotten me entirely_. 

The silence is like an enemy's weight pressing Thorin against the earth, like the weapon poised to fall, and Thorin finds that he cannot receive this blow without a counter. "I only protect myself," he says, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. "Your folk are marching on Erebor, three hundred of them, to take you by battle or barter, one, and soon you will be gone from my bed."

Thranduil goes still, his arm suddenly careful where it embraces Thorin, as if he expects to flee at any moment. "Three hundred,” he says, his voice distant and measured, then: “You sent them my hair.”

It takes Thorin a few moments to speak; his throat constricts around his words and his eyes ache. "I will not have you die in captivity," he says, when he has control of himself again. "I cannot protect you and I cannot bear to see you hurt. You will soon forget me when your people have brought you back into the sunlight."

Thranduil breathes against him, his hand spreading across Thorin's chest. "And if I do not wish to leave your bed," he says, quiet and careful, afraid.

"Are you mad," replies Thorin, twisting to look at him, incredulous. "When you cannot even bear my touch, when you _want_ but _will not_ and you might die at any moment from my lust?”

Thranduil takes a deep breath, mustering his courage, his fingers tracing patterns in the whorls of dark hair where it meets and spills upon Thorin’s breastbone. “Come with me,” he says at last, then takes another deep breath and plunges ahead: “You are already prepared to lose your kingdom, and your nephews will have a dagger in your back long before your five years are gone—come with me, come to Mirkwood, and we may strive against the Necromancer together, and let Erebor hang.”

Thorin laughs, but it comes out as a bitter starved sound. “You would have me desert my own kingdom now, when I have just begun to bring it back to heel? Leave me, and take your own kingdom back, and when you have risen to your throne I hope you will remember me with forgiveness.”

Thranduil does not respond, but his enormous eyes flicker between Thorin's, asking questions with no words and struggling to trust; then he leans his head in and his mouth, soft and summery even with the cold stone all about them, rests against Thorin's own mouth and takes Thorin's lower lip between his own and kisses him, sure and sweet and regretful. The curl of his breath against Thorin's beard is maddening, intoxicating; the shape of his tongue-tip where it rises to test the slope of Thorin's lip is a painful eloquent thing.

"I will not forget you for sun or moon," says Thranduil when they break apart. His mouth is glistening, dark with the pressure of Thorin's kiss. "It is not often given to our kind to feel... what you make me feel, once we have passed from youth into maturity. I will miss you very much," and he kisses Thorin again, briefly.

"I am not worth missing," says Thorin, gruffly, and turns again to let his back be his shield, lest Thranduil see the torment on his face.

Another seven days pass, and another. The elves languish in their quarantined camp, claiming pox, claiming heaves and flux, spreading rumors of dire disease. Not a single dwarf will gainsay them nor suggest that they be driven out; the risk of plague is too great, and the elves are very good at containing their filth. Thranduil takes to pacing Thorin's chambers. Thorin tries not to sleep in his rooms, then fails to stay away, then tries again and fails—each time, he finds himself lured by Thranduil's arms, allowing himself to be kissed and kissing in return. It is painfully good, this cease-fire of passions, the low kindled loss of denying release and the dizzying shame of kissing his elven lover for hours at a time when he should want nothing but blood.

 

* * *

 

 

And then Kili returns. He is spotted in the low hills by a scout, horseback with Heorhod behind him, slumped across the pommel and smeared with blood. By the time the two have reached the first ascending switchbacks that rise to the city, a fleet of healers are assembled, a guard of strong dwarves racing down to the city gate to carry Kili into the city proper for care.

There are marks on his body. A shallow burn has disfigured a segment of his beard on the left. Thorin, shouldering through the knot of pallet-bearers like a common dwarf in the market, catches sight of Kili’s hand, and sees that two of the fingers have been broken. Kili himself lies in a deep swoon, not pale as from a fresh wound but feverish and sweating with cracked lips.

Heorhod is exhausted to staggering from his ride, and his horse is led away still blowing and foaming fit to burst, but after a horn of water and a moment to breathe, the diplomat tells them of the horrors they have escaped.

“The laws of hospitality mean nothing to her,” he says, spitting on the ground. “I took Kili to her camp in good faith! He only wanted to talk.”

“Are you saying that Captain Eowyn did this,” demands Thorin, incredulous. Eowyn, who would not make a deal with him for fear of harm to her brother?

Heorhod fixes him with red eyes, and for a moment his face loses all its drunkard’s apology; at last Thorin sees the cleverness he has been warned of, and it sits ill with him. “I told you,” says Heorhod, “that she was not exiled for nothing,” and then he staggers in his posture and nearly falls, and the healers snatch him away.

Around Thorin, Balin and the captain of the guard exchange glances, and whispers spread like disease in the crowd. If Rohan has done this, they all know, then it is war indeed. 

 

* * *

 

Kili lies abed for days, feverish and ranting, taking nothing but sips of broth and poppy-milk imported at grave expense from far Harad. Thorin sits at his bedside, listening for any scrap of sense, but even as the healers wash the blood from his body and reveal mark after mark upon his skin, Kili calls out for Thranduil alone.

His words are vicious and plaintive by turns. Poisonous, violent filth gives way to sobbing and pleading; threats of abuse intermingle with distressingly intimate endearments. Thorin feels his stomach curdle in response. When the healers give him poppy-milk from the bottle at his bedside, he subsides in his madness, falling into peaceful slumber with a face like wax in its stupor; between doses, he rouses and raves, and Thorin listens.

During one of his rambles, Kili manages to make eye contact with Thorin, and seems to actually see him there. His jaw slackens, and his eyes cease their rolling and fix on Thorin’s, and he chokes on his words. “Who did this to you,” Thorin asks, gripping his nephew by the shoulder, where the skin is unbroken; Kili only gasps a curse and then groans.

The door opens; a healer cranes her head into the room, sees Thorin, and motions behind her for another visitor to approach. Fili enters a moment later, his face drawn with terrible anticipation, and stops for a moment at the door, overcome.

Thorin stands aside, not wishing to come between Fili and his brother, not now that Kili stands at death’s door; but as Fili approaches the bed, Kili turns his face to the wall and subsides into a low steady babble of meaningless syllables. Thorin, who has heard the fever-speech of the last few hours, can discern what name is threaded through his mumbling; Fili only sits, staring into the darkness in the corners of the room, waiting for his brother to speak his name instead.

Like this they stand for an hour, exchanging few words; then the door opens again, and Heorhod enters.

He is washed and dressed, but still slumped with weariness, and seemingly he has already been drowning his sorrows, by the smell of him. Thorin opens his mouth to deliver a stern command, but a high-pitched shriek rises from the sickbed, and he turns to find Kili scrabbling at the blankets, kicking and flailing. Blood blossoms across his bandages, and Fili struggles to hold him down, calling his name over and over to calm him; Heorhod’s eyes open wide and round, and Thorin pushes him from the room and shuts the door behind them.

“It’s my hair,” slurs Heorhod. “And my stature—he thinks I’m a torturer, I, who rescued him—” To Thorin’s disgust, the man bursts into tears.

“Go,” says Thorin, repulsed. “Come back when you’ve had your fill of ale, and slept it off.” He eyes Heorhod again, remembering that moment of clarity, and finds that he does not trust Heorhod’s beery tears. “My thanks for rescuing my nephew from torture,” he adds, “and I hope that you are not ill-served by your own people for the work.”

Thorin watches Heorhod stumble away into the dark. He finds that he has no stomach left for Kili’s sickbed after all, not with Fili mourning at his side; so he returns to his chambers, and lets Thranduil curl up against him and stroke his hair while he lies awake and hears in his mind the echoing babble of his nephew’s ruin.

 

* * *

 

Thorin is in a small audience with four merchants from the Iron Hills, influential folk with deep pockets, when a guardsman knocks at the door.

Four other guards surround him as he leaves, and Thorin’s mouth goes dry. The first guardsman, eyes fixed on the floor, begs pardon for the interruption, and with miserable dutifulness informs Thorin that there is a dead elf in his room.


	11. Chapter 11

_A dead elf._ Thorin shoulders past them and takes off at a run, feeling an awful sound welling up in his chest, and pauses only briefly at the door of his room (the door is unbarred, no sign of violence) before staggering into the main chamber.

The room is empty. Thorin’s old cloak lies on the floor, abandoned; Thranduil’s silks are slung about the room, hanging from the sparse furniture, exactly as he leaves them when not wearing them. A half-drunk decanter of wine sits beside an overturned glass on the bedside table. The book of Khuzdul poetry is open on the bed.

A trail of ashes has defiled the rug in front of the fireplace; black footprints lead to the bed. From behind the bed itself unfurls a bright trail of red, a smeared swath of blood that leads to a pool of copper-red hair and a white arm, leather armor blackened with soot, a fierce pointed face. Not Thranduil; Thorin nearly sags to the floor with relief. But an elf nonetheless.

And an elf of Mirkwood to boot, unless Thorin is mistaken. A rescuer, he supposes—there must have been others, he thinks dimly, calling about the room and searching the library and tearing the blankets from the bed. For Thranduil is gone, and they must have taken him.

At first he feels as though he will vomit, as though his hands have turned to ice. Anticipation has only made the pain greater. Somehow he imagined that the rescue would come at night, and find them lying in bed together—that Thranduil would insist upon Thorin’s safety, and kiss him goodbye, and escape with a look cast over his shoulder, a final farewell to linger in Thorin’s dreams.

And yet—why would Thranduil struggle, if he were being rescued? Did the guards interrupt them? No, surely they would have reported a rescue attempt before an enemy casualty. Did Thranduil change his mind?

No. Thranduil was not the one fighting. The bed-ticking is calm, undisturbed except where Thorin has thrown the coverlets aside. If not for the body at the bedside, Thorin would have assumed that Thranduil had simply fallen asleep, and been carried gently away.

Slain an elf, his own kin, without a struggle, then gone to sleep and disappeared from a room which he habitually locked.

Why the soot? Had the rescuer come down the chimney? Thorin supposes it could be done, but did the elves not get his map and his note, and seize the simpler approach? Would they have been so mad and so daring as to risk finding their way down the smoke-holes of Erebor? Did his messenger stray?

The guards have already swept his chambers, and Thorin hears them in the corridor outside, their captain directing patrols to search the palace quarters, the under-mountain, the city beyond. Servants bustle into the room, bundling up the body and pouring sand on the blood; the moment of paralysis has passed for all but Thorin, and the process of recovery begun.

Thorin, for his part, stands in the midst of his empty room and struggles to make sense of it all. Thranduil would have barred the door against anyone who meant him harm, would he not? The elf at the bedside—he must have been alone, there is only one set of footprints—he came by the chimney, smeared with soot—who cut him down? Who else might have come into Thorin’s chambers without Thranduil sounding the alarm?

Thorin imagines a thief creeping into Thorin’s empty chambers and hiding, waiting until Thorin has come back and gone—nonsense, why linger—his mind is spinning. Perhaps someone came to the door in disguise? No, Thranduil knows better than to admit any but Thorin himself and the servants who bring him food. Perhaps someone crept in behind the servant who brought the wine?

The wine. Thorin picks up the cup with numb fingers, smells the dregs, tilts the decanter to look inside; nothing seems amiss, but… on the floor, between table and bed, lies a familiar bottle.

It takes him almost a minute to recognize it, but Thorin has spent enough time staring in miserable silence at the thing: poppy-milk, the bottle that stood at Kili’s bedside, the painkiller that drugged him into slumber.

Thorin shouts for a guard, who takes the bottle with a grave face and rushes away to check the infirmary. Then, reeling, he stumbles from his chambers and sags, numb and choking, against the wall.

Someone drugged Thranduil. It could not have been the elves; it must have been a servant, or someone posing as a servant, pouring wine, lingering until Thranduil had fallen unconscious. The rescuer must have come while Thranduil was drifting, and interrupted the scene unwittingly.

He cannot make any more sense of it. He cannot make himself focus. His eyes seem to drift, falling to the flagstones like a dropped garment.

On the floor, he sees a glitter, a faint line like a cobweb, a silver hair.

Snatching it up, he knows it is no mistake—he has never seen a single hair of Thranduil's lying lost in the bedsheets, or tangled in the corners of his bedchamber. It does as Thranduil bids it, whether uprooting easily for a gift, or lying flat and smooth upon the coverlets even after Thorin has helplessly kissed him until his mouth is beginning to bruise. Thranduil's hair does not fall unnoticed.

And Thorin is right, for not thirty paces beyond, there is another hair, this one lying upon a long carpet just at the fork of the hall.

Another, and another—he is delayed by the problem of a large room with many doors, but finds a hair caught in the hinge of one, and off he goes—until he is a good distance from the main halls of Erebor, in a familiar passage with a low ceiling, and with perhaps twenty hairs clutched in his hand, Thorin cannot find another.

There is a sound, muffled through a heavy door, just a little further on. A laugh that Thorin recognizes, and a low, wretched groan that makes Thorin sick to hear. He knows where he is; but the tunnel seems close and stale, and Thorin seems caught in a nightmare as he races to the end of the hall. The door slides easily enough aside, as it always has.

Beyond it crouches Kili, eyes fierce and filled with triumph, kneeling over the naked and crumpled form of Thranduil, cutting delicately at the juncture of throat and shoulder with a knife.

Thranduil should be fighting; Thorin knows well enough the strength in those long arms, but Thranduil is only shuddering and squirming, his legs feebly pushing against the stone floor, and Kili overpowers him easily. “Will you still fight me,” hisses Kili—there is something horribly wrong with his voice, some bone-grating overtone. “After all I’ve given up for you? If you knew what I’ve done—”

“What _have_ you done,” shouts Thorin, recovering his voice, preparing to charge; but Kili scarcely bothers to glance at him, shifting the knife from Thranduil’s shoulder—he has carved a rune into it, his own initial—to rest gently against Thranduil’s throat, where the pulse jumps. Thorin checks himself, knowing how easily that knife will cut.

"I rescued him," says Kili, still looking down at Thranduil's shaking body, the chiding in his voice turning to melancholy. "I wanted him so badly, uncle, and you were always flaunting him... and he would have escaped, if I had not rescued him."

Kili turns at last to look at him, and what Thorin sees in his face is unsettling, sickening, inexpressible but  _wrong_. 

"I understand you now," Kili adds, as if he cannot see Thorin edging closer. "I lost sight of the throne, watching him. I suppose I have given up a kingdom for him, just as you did.”

“Let him go,” warns Thorin. “You should be in the halls of healing, boy, you are mad with fever.”

Kili shrugs, uncaring. The hand holding the knife is steady; the other is gently, sickeningly petting Thranduil’s face, thumbing over his lip, the plain knotwork of a heavy ring on his finger digging into Thranduil’s skin as it passes. Thranduil’s eyes are glazed, and his mouth moves against Kili’s hand; Thorin wonders if he even knows who is touching him.

“Mad, certainly,” says Kili. “I was mad to trust that tall barbarian. I just thought, if I could make them understand…”

"Did the Rohirrim torture you," says Thorin, moving with all caution. "Mahal's stones, it's been days since you returned, and you haven’t said a word. Look, lad, your wounds are opening, you’re bleeding—”

Kili sighs, fingering the place where his knife has been on Thranduil's shoulder, showing that the blood has stopped its flow even though Thranduil's spirit seems to be failing. "I hardly feel the wounds," he admits. "I feel so many other things more."

Thorin sees the way Kili's eyes are ever-drawn to Thranduil's naked body, and wonders if he can perhaps creep closer while Kili stares. The lure is obvious, and even lost in madness, Kili must know that each dart of his eyes from his uncle to his captive buys Thorin another small step forward. But has Thorin not been captured by the trap as well, even knowing the bait? Are the dwarves not born with lust in their hearts for mithril (like his hair) and moonstone (like his skin) and vengeance (like the blood drying upon his throat)?

He should let Kili stare, and slip closer, and raise one great fist—but he sees Kili's fingers flex upon the knife, two broken and stone-stiff, and he remembers that his kingdom is not all he neglected in his lust, and sees in his memory the hurt and cold withdrawal in Kili’s eyes before.

Once they had been boys with soft, curling beards. Once they had followed him with adoration on their faces, and he had loved them back, his beloved nephews instead of his hated rivals. Once they had seen their uncle’s love as an easier goal than his throne.

Too late, too late. He should have realized his error years ago. He remembers the greed and paranoia he had once felt in this room, and sees it stark on Kili’s face, and wonders what power drove them all to hate each other so. "Rohan will pay for its crimes," says Thorin, his voice thickening on his tongue. "I swear vengeance on them—I will burn and salt the earth of Meduseld—come away from him, Kili, come back to the healers—"

"You swear in vain," spits Kili. "Where were you when the brands were laid against me? Where was your vengeance when the machines, when the wheels, the ropes..." He is gibbering, the knife clutched tighter against his palm. Thranduil, whose face has slipped into eerie contentment, is disturbed by the rasp of Kili’s voice, and moves his legs against the filthy stone of the floor, hardly a bid for escape but enough to turn Kili's gaze again. 

Kili bends low over Thranduil, though he still throws frantic glances lest Thorin close in; and he says something low, sibilant, which makes Thranduil shudder.

"It was my fault," says Thorin, desperate. "I sent you into the hands of Rohan, thinking you would balk. I did not think they would hurt you."

Kili merely shrugs. "You will feel the weight of your error, in time," he murmurs, with no real heat; all his attention is now for Thranduil. His free hand wanders, palming Thranduil's belly, stroking his thigh, pressing at his own groin beneath his trousers. The other hand is steady, for all its brokenness, for all his madness, and the knife hovers over Thranduil's skin.

Thorin sees with horror that Thranduil, reeling in the grip of poppy-milk, responds to Kili’s touch, and that pleasure seeps into the angle of his lips, though he mouths _no_ and _stop_. Thorin remembers his words: _want, but will not_ , and he feels sick to his stomach.

"The fault was mine," he insists, taking another careful step. "Thranduil has done nothing to injure you. I was a fool, but I sent you to secure the kingdom I know you will rule, if it remains when I am gone."

"But my brother is the eldest," protests Kili in mockery, thrusting his hand between Thranduil's thighs. The sinews of his knuckles flicker, fingertips exploring, and Thorin feels sick. "I would not have murdered him for the crown, you know. I might have driven him into exile, or… or simply ruled from behind his throne. I did love him, before they cut the love out of me.”

“Take your vengeance on Rohan,” insists Thorin, “or on me. Let him _go_.”

“Oh, but he loves it,” croons Kili, drawing his hand up to stroke Thranduil’s hardening length, and Thorin sees Thranduil’s face slacken in drugged pleasure and then draw tight in uneasy questioning, in nauseating confusion. “And at any rate, my vengeance is not for Rohan, nor for Thranduil.”

"Then for whom," queries Thorin, a suspicion growing inside him that twists against his spine.

"I never made it to their camp," Kili says, and his laugh is all wrong; his wandering fingers dig cruelly into Thranduil’s thigh, leaving red marks in their path between, his ring gouging at the flesh. "I was betrayed, I was captured, and he took me—ha ha! He took me away—he carried me to Mirkwood..."

He is laughing and crying at once, and the knife in his hand flashes against Thranduil’s skin, his free hand pressing upward and twisting _between_. Thranduil stiffens, as much as his intoxicated state will allow, and a fluttering broken word tears from his throat: Thorin’s name, spoken in a delirium of uncertain arousal.

"Mirkwood," breathes Thorin in horror, and Kili sobs aloud at the sound of the name. Thorin cannot tear his eyes from what Kili is doing; it seems that he is trying to breach the elf open, that he has forgotten all the lessons of the Necromancer’s corpse-tributes, that he is a moment’s slip from murder. Thranduil, for all his drugged stupor, is twisting as much as he can, gasping, his cock hard but his face filled with terror. “Stop it,” begs Thorin, past commanding now. “Stop, look, you’re killing him!”

"I know I cannot keep him," says Kili. His voice is bright, but tears course in his ill-groomed beard. "I have not your control, uncle. I will break him, but at least I will have him—I will have the one good thing, after all the pain. They told me, they said they could not take it from me, even with knives and irons." As he speaks, he thrusts his fingers deeper with a small jerk, and Thranduil shakes and goes pale and gasps for breath. Kili holds him there for a moment, pressing, and Thorin realizes his fingertips are _inside_ ; then he withdraws his hand, grasps Thranduil’s face like a merchant inspecting a side of meat, thumbing Thranduil's mouth open—the jaw falls limp, the lips are white.

“No,” pleads Thorin. “No, Thranduil—”

Kili hardly seems to notice that Thranduil is drowning in shock. “I don’t mind breaking him,” Kili muses, “which I suppose is why they left this to me, when they wrung all the good out of me. He is all I have left, and I knew you would never let me have him. And he was escaping." Thorin has never seen Thranduil so close to the brink, and he wonders now if he could have pushed a little farther, if he might have had more, and he hates himself for wondering this and for picturing Thranduil's pleading face and his engorged cock when there he lies, a few yards away, threatened with both death and violation.

This is what Thorin planned for him, once long ago. This is the suffering he wanted for his lover. This is the darkness that Mirkwood—that the Necromancer—twisted into his nephew, and that Thorin carried willingly in his heart without even the excuse of torture.

Vengeance is sweet, as rot is sweet. "Please," Thorin says. "Please stop hurting him."

"Come no closer, uncle," Kili says, pressing his blade closer to Thranduil’s throat, and with his free hand he undoes his laces and pulls himself out, hard and weeping.

Thorin wants to turn his face away. Nausea turns in his belly, and terrible guilt. He has known of darkness growing in Kili’s heart for a long time now, but nothing like this—no sane creature could be like this—

Kili ruts against Thranduil's thigh, and moans as he works at him, pulling at his limp arms, trying to arrange him so that he can be more easily violated; and all the while the knife bites against the white skin of Thranduil's throat, threatening to break it, a mere slip of the wrist from spilling his life's blood. How can Thorin act, with Thranduil's death so close at hand?

And Thranduil's eyes are glassy, but as he is turned his gaze falls across Thorin, and the blank look on his face cuts deep— _I would rather die,_  he said once, and Thorin thinks he understands now. He can see himself as he was, once, in this dark shape hunched and laughing over Thranduil's flesh. He cannot imagine how Thranduil ever wanted him.

 _Because_ , he tells himself, at last understanding:  _you gave up your vengeance and became his protector, because you chose what he wanted over what you needed_ , and he steels himself to watch Thranduil die, and he screams as he leaps.

Kili half-turns at the sound, which pulls the dagger a few inches to the side, and Thranduil's head lolls back, away from the knife. Thorin strikes like a boulder falling from a cliffside; there is a flash, Kili swinging the dagger once, twice, needles and sheets of hot pain across Thorin's ribs. There is blood, but the world is red already.

With his broken hands, Kili cannot hold the dagger tightly, and it flies from his blood-slicked grip; Thorin hears it clatter away and skid to a halt at the edge of the precipice. Still, Kili may be wounded and broken, but he is a fell warrior, and the moment his hands are empty he flies at Thorin snarling. His mangled hands lock on Thorin’s throat, and as Thorin chokes Kili laughs into his uncle’s face, kicking and twisting to avoid Thorin's blows, stronger than he should be against Thorin’s clawing hands. The pain in Thorin's throat is immense; the pressure in his chest is an agony. 

If he had faced Kili in open combat for the throne, swords in strong hands, Thorin knows now he would have died. As it is, even with the torments of Mirkwood marring his flesh, Kili is nearly his match, and Thorin only wins free to his next breath by grasping Kili's broken fingers and twisting. Kili screams, and Thorin sobs for air as he kicks his nephew away, reaches for Thranduil, tries to push him away and fails—he is losing blood, his hands are slick—he is sliding to the floor, falling, and behind him Kili is gathering his next attack—

Thorin falls to his knees, to his belly, lies like a lover across Thranduil's body. He feels the warmth of his blood seeping across Thranduil's chilled skin, and squints against the tilting fog that has begun to close in, and feels with a surge of hope the way Thranduil responds to the safety of his body as cover, the flickering speed of heartbeat returning. It nearly drowns out Kili's staggering footsteps as they approach.

"He's  _mine_ ," whispers Kili. "He will submit to  _me_." There is no lust in his voice, only rage, only thirst for the power and the spite that Thranduil's broken body will demonstrate.

Kili has recovered his knife. He stands over them now, knife raised, breast heaving, fury twisting his battered features. There is no more room for negotiation. There will be no reconciliation of brothers. Thorin suspects there will be no new sunrise for him, and no king's grave cut into the mountain either. There is only what can be saved, and what cannot be saved, and Thorin finds that for all his guilt he is willing to sacrifice the latter for the former.

Thranduil's mouth moves, and Thorin scarcely hears his words:  _Let me take the knife_ , he says. He still does not want to die of Kili's attentions, Thorin realizes; and perhaps, a softer voice echoes in his mind, he does not wish to see Thorin dead. It would be easy, and merciful, the last gasp of effort spent to twist away, the lovers consummated in mutual death.

But Thorin has struggled with his body for too long, and his control is slipping. As Kili spills his mad laughter and as the knife falls Thorin heaves himself half up, the twist and tear of muscle and flesh ignored and the hot spike of the stab, the shoulder-bones grating against steel, the pain drowning all thought as Thorin swings.

A mighty blow, he had told his people, was how he slew the diamond-skinned dragon. A lie, but a lie with a truth at its heart, for though his nephews have always been warriors, Thorin was once a blacksmith.

His arm swings like a hammer, and Kili—still gripping the knife with which he has pierced his uncle—only gapes as Thorin's fist meets his breast, bone breaking under flesh, ribs cracking in the moment of impact. Thorin falls back, exhausted utterly by the strain; Kili coughs, and blood spatters from his lips.

Kili coughs again, staggers, loses the strength of his knees, drops his knife; and as Thorin sags against the stone, feeling the ache of his wounds begin to tell, feeling the heat of his blood seeping through his clothing, Kili topples backward and pitches over the edge of the shelf and is gone.

Thorin does not let himself comprehend what he has done. He hears, distantly, Thranduil's cry of horror, and realizes that his elven lover may yet live; but the sacrifice is done and the world is slipping away like a guest leaving a deathbed, and all is dark.

 

* * *

 

He only knows he is not dead because of the pain. The pain is Thranduil, whose fingers are still shaking, who is binding his wounds and pressing his hair against them and murmuring soft Elvish words, hopeless prayers in a broken voice.

He only knows these things for moments between darkness, and terrible thirst.

There is water, poured from Thranduil's hands, tasting of mineral and earth. Thorin drinks it greedily. From the ache of his body and the hollows under Thranduil's eyes, he guesses that he has been unconscious for some time—hours? The beam of light still falls into the yawning chasm that swallowed Kili, so the day has not yet turned to night, but darkness creeps in the corners and hides the scattered bones of his ancestors and the smear of blood where Kili… he does not dare think about it. His head spins and his eyes are heavy.

He is a murderer.

"You protected yourself," murmurs Thranduil, "and saved me," and Thorin knows he has said it aloud, but the comfort does not pierce like the pain. Kili fell for the same sins that Thorin has harbored all along. He has been no better than Kili was. Than Kili  _was_.

Then there is a scuffle outside in the hall. The door slides open, there is a shout, and three guards spill out onto the narrow ledge, with a dozen more behind them, and Fili’s voice commanding from beyond.

They are discovered at last. Thorin manages to pull himself to his knees, then to his feet, while the guards stare at him in horror.

At last Fili pushes through the cluster of guards and looks about, taking in the scene—Thorin stiff with dried blood, Thranduil crouched naked in the dust, the whole space in disarray from the fight. “What is this,” he demands, gesturing about him.

Thorin can scarcely think. “Thranduil was… was taken,” he says at last, his tongue swollen and his throat aching. He is dizzy, feverish, but he knows enough to lie. “By… assassins.”

“My lord,” cuts in one of the guards, drawing Fili’s attention. “Kili’s knife.”

He is holding the blade, still gory with dried blood. Fili’s brow knits, and he looks from the knife to Thorin, whose clothing is slashed and matted. “Where is Kili,” he says, furious suspicion entering his voice.

Thorin steels himself. “He went mad,” he manages, “and attacked me. We fought; he fell.”

“He _fell_?” The blood goes out of Fili’s face, and he pushes past Thorin and scrambles to the edge, where blood smears to the lip of the shelf and over the rim, and calls out into the darkness, frantic: “Kili! _Kili—_ ”

The guards surround him and pull him back, and Fili fights them off, screaming for them to go get Kili, to find his brother. They overpower him, grim-faced and gentle, until he leans against them, taking great gulping breaths and gripping their arms as if to bruise them, as if to bruise himself. “How could you do this,” he says, when he gains enough control of himself to speak.

Thorin holds himself upright by sheer force of will, swaying, the pain of his wounds rising like upheaved earth. “He attacked me,” he repeats, dull-voiced. “He… he was driven mad, Fili, he was tortured by the Necromancer—”

Fili snarls at him like a beast; his face contorts with passion. “He’s _hurt_ , uncle, he—he was—” Fili’s throat seems to close up on the words, and he leans even more heavily on his supporters, nearly losing his footing. Finally he adds, disbelieving: “The Necromancer? Heorhod was with him—he went to Captain Eowyn, not to the Necromancer.” He squints, presses his tongue to his teeth, adds: “You _lie_.”

Another guard has been sidling closer to Thranduil, who kneels silently, watching the exchange with wary eyes. Thranduil shifts under the scrutiny of the guard, who calls out: “Look, my lord, Kili’s rune!”

The guards release Fili, who elbows them aside and stumbles forward to see for himself. Thranduil presses his palm to the scabbed cut, only to have his wrist yanked away; Fili sees, reaches out, touches, and turns to Thorin with murder in his eyes.

“Attacked _you_ ,” he says. “You were protecting your elvish whore, weren’t you? You chose this _filth_ over my brother! You betray your own family, your own kingdom, and you blame the Necromancer?”

Thorin sways and nearly falls, but Thranduil is upright as fast as his still-weak limbs will carry him, and winds his arms about Thorin’s torso in support. "Let me go," says Thorin, but Thranduil simply holds him, leveling his mask-like gaze at Fili.

“Your brother was not himself,” says Thranduil, bold and steady for all the shaking of his limbs, but before he can continue Fili shouts: “Himself or not, he was my _brother_ ,” and Thranduil falls still and does not respond.

For his part, Thorin is endlessly grateful for even the slow-recovering strength of Thranduil’s arms. The weight of horror in his breast is too great to bear alone. “Oh, Kili,” he says, feeling his voice break.

But Fili draws himself up very straight, scrubs at his face with his hands, and shakes himself as if waking from a dream. “My uncle is mad,” he says to the guards, his voice heavy with the weariness of new sorrow. “He has turned against his own, and chosen his enemies over his own kingdom. His treachery is plain; he does not deserve to live.”

The guards look at one another, gauging the situation by each others’ expressions, but Thorin cuts in: “The throne is yours, if you let us go—I will take myself into the wilderness with him and never return—”

“The throne is mine,” echoes Fili, “and no, you will never return. Take him to the high crevice outside the mountain,” he directs the guards, “and throw him off, and his elvish whore with him.”

One guard speaks up: “He is—he was a king, my lord.”

Fili turns on the dwarf with venom in his voice. “He murdered my brother,” he hisses. “Take him, take them both, or take their place instead.”

Thorin is too weak to stand, and though the guards strive to be reasonably careful, Thorin’s wounds pull open with the first effort of lifting and he screams in pain. Thranduil pushes the dwarves aside gently and bends to where Thorin lies crumpled and groaning, and lifts him with his trembling arms, bearing his broken lover with white-lipped determination.

“I will bear him to your high crevice,” says Thranduil, panting with effort, “and see the starlight, before we are slain."

"Starlight you shall have," says Fili, "if the snow permits," but his voice is colder than any storm on the heights, and the guards obey him, their new and golden and grieving king.


	12. Chapter 12

The deep paths that lead to the Door of Adukhan are long and steep, and though Thranduil slowly recovers from his shaking pallor as they climb, the guards are forced to help him support Thorin before they have passed the first ascent, where the narrow passage widens into a steeper volley of switchbacks on spindly vaulted columns. Thorin feels him trembling with exhaustion, and remembers that Thranduil is still much thinner than the strong-armed warrior he was once, still affected in his flesh by his captivity with the orcs. And, he supposes, with Thorin; he has, after all, been kept in a small enclosed space for months, fearing attack and awaiting rescue.

The knowledge spurs Thorin to bear his own weight as much as he can, dizzy from blood loss but unwounded in the legs, unwilling to be carried by the guards; for as Thranduil’s long fingers tighten upon Thorin’s thick biceps, Thorin’s own body begins to adjust to its losses, and his footsteps echo steadily with the others’ into the open dark about them.

These stairs, Thorin knows, end at the north apex of this shaft, where the ceiling grows oppressively close and the passage twists into the volcanic ruin of the north side of the Lonely Mountain. Lava tubes meander here, and there are many abandoned delvings where such desperate beasts as they have become might disappear into the black. For a moment, Thorin entertains the fantasy of escape into the deepest places of the earth, into the most ancient and unwise digs, like a writhing creature in the dark with his pale-eyed fellow at his side.

Thranduil feels it in him, how the mocking echo of hope tenses his muscles and quickens his breath, and in the darkness some spark of meaning passes between them. Fury swells in Thorin’s chest, and reckless intent with it.

At the top of the stairs Thranduil stumbles, and his heel falls close to the unguarded edge of the stair, a pebble-slip from an endless plummet. The guards turn to grab at him, protecting by instinct, and Thranduil straightens to his full height and cries out some fell elvish battle curse and dives into them with scarcely a look at Thorin.

It does not matter. Thorin has already seen it coming, felt it in Thranduil’s stride, and before the guards can recover he strikes with what little strength he has left, fists falling on his captors with less than his usual might, blood seeping from the reopening wounds with each impact. Thranduil has no weapon, and is naked to boot; but he falls about himself with fists and elbows and long limbs, and for a moment their advantage seems almost enough—

But Thorin is gasping after a few seconds, and Thranduil unarmed and unarmored, and soon enough Thorin checks his fists to Thranduil’s shout and turns, breathing like a bull, to see Thranduil cornered against the empty gulf of the stair-edge, crouched in balance, bare ribs heaving from exertion.

The chiefest of the guards speaks wearily. “You’ll cooperate,” he says, “or over he goes. Or if there isn’t a crack handy, we’ll gut him.”

Thorin watches the fierce lines of Thranduil’s face slacken into defeat, then determination. “I’ll kill at least half of you if you so much as scratch him,” Thorin barks, not taking his eyes from Thranduil’s; he sees how Thranduil’s gaze drops to the stone, to the edge, to the distance of his ankles from the black, how it fills again with defiance and despair in equal measure. “No,” he adds, more quietly; and Thranduil finds his eyes again and holds to his gaze like a tether.

He wants to jump, to free Thorin for combat, or to die with a sword in his throat instead of naked on a mountainside. He has always, Thorin reflects, carried a death-wish, has he not? And might not a fall in the dark be better than the flash of passing stone and approaching earth, if death must come at the bottom?

“No,” he repeats, licking his lips. It might have tempted him, if the memory of Kili’s fall were not so fresh, if he could not still remember the drowning cry cut off with shock at the slip. “I will go quietly,” he offers, “if you will spare us the fall, and let us die of exposure on the stone lip of the door instead of the rocks below.”

“A slower death,” says the guard, wary in his disbelief.

“But death together,” replies Thorin, and sees the death-light leave Thranduil’s eyes entirely, and sorrow stoop his shoulders into resignation.

“It’s no difference to me,” says the guard, but they surround their prisoners more tightly as they continue to ascend, and Thorin keeps his back straight and his eyes on the tunnel floor ahead. Thranduil is herded ahead of him, blades at his back, a clear and visible threat to stay Thorin’s fighting hand.

The air grows cold, and begins to bite; Thorin is, after all, only clad in tunic and leggings. Long before they emerge, Thorin is shivering, and when the guards turn the crank that lifts the heavy door, the air that comes in—lilac, crystal, dry as ground glass—sucks the heat from his bones like a glutton gumming at the marrow.

Beyond is a high place, a flat slab of stone scarcely a few feet deep, suspended in an impossible precipice. Thorin has no idea what its original purpose was meant to be; it is one of the oldest delvings, from before the establishment of Erebor, and it has been used only a few times as an execution-spot for nobles and traitors.

Any snow that once collected there has long since been devoured by sunlight, sublimated if not melted away. The stone is cold, the door-sill an inescapable prison with no shelter but the towering sheer wall against which it is set. They are so elevated that even the tree-lined lower slopes fade into a smudge of green-black below.

The guards push Thorin out with a blade to his back, and then Thranduil behind him; one, with a pitying look, spreads his own cloak on the cold stone. Then the door falls shut, and the guards depart, and they are alone in the high and desolate twilight.

It is very cold. Clear, as the snow has exhausted itself on the lower slopes, and the air is crisp and tastes of the herbs that grow above the highest pines—but cold, with a bitter bite that does not trouble even the deepest tunnels and which promises a gnawing frost by morn.

For, to their left, beyond the crags of the summit and the fine saw-comb of the far mountains of the north and the flat shimmer of the western horizon, the sky is marbling into sunset; to the east, darkness has already obscured the world’s rim. Night is coming, to cover them and drown them and drain each exhalation of warmth. Above them, the first pinpricks of starlight are assembling.

“Starlight,” breathes Thranduil. There is awe in his voice, and reverence, and dread.

Thorin remembers, now, the uncanny warmth of Thranduil’s skin, how he walked untroubled by chill in his diaphanous silks at Thorin’s side. It draws him inexorably, clinging to Thranduil’s side, drawing him down with his elven lover to sit upon the guard’s cloak with their backs pressed to the closed door. Thorin’s feet stretch slightly over the edge, while Thranduil is forced to draw up his knees to sit comfortably; neither of them cares to let any part of themselves dangle against the rock face below.

Thorin huddles close, and Thranduil lets him, sitting in silence while Thorin breathes into the sweet warmth of Thranduil’s hair, into the scent of his skin, which is warm despite the falling twilight. No hint remains of the death-chill of Kili’s assault. “You burn like a brand,” murmurs Thorin, pressing his hands to Thranduil’s side.

“I will, for a time,” responds Thranduil, still looking up at the sky. “Elves are made to withstand great hardship; though I fear this night will prove too long for me, and too cold. And there will come carrion-crows, in time.” He speaks calmly, with resignation; Thorin shudders, and Thranduil places one hand upon his thigh, soothing him. “At least we need not die alone.”

The words of a warrior to his brother-in-arms, not of a lover to his beloved. Thorin refuses to feel cheated; here on the heights, the cold bites deeper than even love may reach.

Slowly the sunlight turns to fire, and upon Thranduil’s naked skin the light seems to linger like honey. As the shadow of the mountain falls over them and the last hint of day departs, only the heat of Thranduil’s skin keeps Thorin from freezing.

At last they wrap themselves in the guard’s cloak, a thin bulwark against the bone-biting wind, and lie pressed side-by-side on the narrow ledge. It is like pressing himself to flowing earth-melt. Thorin's skin grows numb where Thranduil is not touching it; the wind sluices over the mountain here, so fast and clear that in the failing light Thorin fancies he can see the boughs of trees a hundred ells below, without a hint of haze from moisture. Thranduil, on the other hand, is so warm against his frozen skin that his fingers ache as he presses them against Thranduil's breast.

Strange, to lie so close and with such desperation, and to have it rise not from his own lust but from the instinct of self-preservation. He almost does not realize that Thranduil is stirring, that the shape of his body is liquid and mobile against him; but Thranduil's mouth opens slightly against Thorin's temple, his breath like a furnace, and he whispers some small meaningless thing in Thorin's ear, a hopeless comfort.

"I have been your death," says Thorin, tasting stone-cold air as he parts his lips to speak. "I should have sent you to your kin the moment I saw your face. I… I meant to hurt you, once, but I turned from that path too late.”

“You turned from it in time to save me from your nephew,” muses Thranduil. “I cannot entirely forgive you for my captivity, but at least you began to repay that debt before the last.”

“My crimes are worse than Kili's,” insists Thorin. “I drove him to his ruin; I used you foully—"

"Hush," murmurs Thranduil. "Your crimes are great, but if I am to be your judge, I will not condemn you, here at the end of both our folly."

"I condemn myself," retorts Thorin, drawing back to address Thranduil face-to-face. The crag looms above them, the sky behind it so black that the rock-face itself seems to glow, and the shape of its shadow seeps over their bodies, sucking away the faint warmth of Thranduil's eldritch affinities. (He understands, now, that Thranduil will take some time longer than himself to die, and wonders what will become of Thranduil when he is besieged by scavenging birds, alone with Thorin's body.)

"Then let me sentence the condemned, since the wrong was done to me," says Thranduil, and before Thorin can reply Thranduil presses his mouth to Thorin's own. His lips are so warm that Thorin can make no defense, and his own mouth moves gratefully under Thranduil's own, relinquishing control entirely.

A strange trust grows between them now, a new thing Thorin has not known before. He can feel, as Thranduil's tongue curls into his own mouth and Thranduil's hands splay across his back, the hard length of Thranduil's arousal, and he knows that by his previous habit he should withdraw, denying pleasure by his own authority and will, deciding in his wisdom what is best for his captive.

But even as Thranduil's body moves against his, as Thranduil presses him back into the thin cloak over the cold stone and stretches his body across Thorin's own like a blanket, as the warm comfort of their touch takes on a hungry edge and the sharp pain of still-oozing wounds makes each movement and pressure a trial, Thorin begins to understand this thing growing in his heart. He trusts Thranduil, as he has not trusted him before, to decide the bounds of life and death for himself, to take what pleasure he can withstand and to deny himself what he cannot. Perhaps this is the knife upon which Thranduil wishes to throw himself, like a mortally-wounded soldier taken prisoner; or perhaps this is the last comfort for them both, before the cold and the crows take them, before exposure and hunger and thirst break them.

Perhaps this is, in a way, the voice he has denied his lover for so long.

So Thorin only embraces Thranduil as his lips part and sigh against the coarse beard-hair on Thorin’s throat, as the first moan and then the second escape Thranduil's lips, as the languid burning roll of his hips becomes more forceful and more directed. Thorin clings to him with fingers gone on the outside numb with cold, lent articulation and grip only by the heat of Thranduil's skin; but now the heat comes from Thranduil in waves, and rutting against him feels like being buried in living coals.

Thorin has never imagined such a contrast, being so powerless, having Thranduil be his sole source of warmth and life. He arches into Thranduil’s weight, into the heat of his naked skin, unsure whether he seeks pleasure or merely life; but pleasure there is in plenty, and despite the pain it feels so _good_ to lie skin-to-skin, writhing out of just enough clothing to bare his own swollen flesh, resenting the way the cold stone saps away the warmth of Thranduil’s ministrations.

If Thranduil dies, so be it; they will both be dead by morning. There is a freedom in despair. Thorin accepts the gift that is given, the roll and slide of ardor against the creeping numb of the cold, and tells himself he will be glad to die when Thranduil has perished. Better for Thranduil to be ended now, he tells himself, than to risk lingering for days or more; or to be driven to throw himself, starving and frozen, from the lip of their shelter onto the rocks below.

At least this death will come with pleasure, and with comfort, and with the freedom of choice. Thorin is too exhausted to weep, so delirious from his wounds that even as Thranduil presses his cheek to Thorin’s temple, wrapping his calf about Thorin’s legs, Thorin understands that he will not find release in this. He is too broken; he is too far spent. He only holds Thranduil tight, and presses his mouth to whatever skin he can reach, and soothes and groans and cannot say goodbye.

Finally, gasping, Thranduil raises his head to look into Thorin’s eyes. The light is dim, only starlight with a trace of distant moon, but Thorin sees the black-eyed hunger and desperation on his face, and knows what Thranduil is asking without words.

Nor does Thorin have any words; he only nods, and cradles Thranduil’s head in his hand to press their foreheads together, and tightens his jaw and nods. Thranduil exhales, a long shivering sob, and resumes his motion, riding Thorin’s body with careless abandon, seeking the oblivion of whatever release awaits. Thorin’s hands clutch against his sides, feeling the lift of breath and the thrum of pulse beneath his palms, memorizing all these things to keep him company for what remains of his life. Then Thranduil stiffens and his embrace tightens and Thorin hears something that sounds like pain, or like sorrow, torn from Thranduil's throat in low and inexorable tones.

It is sorrow and ecstasy. It is the sound of Thranduil's climax, which Thorin has never heard, which floods him with unbearable warmth as Thranduil's seed soaks between them through the ruined tatters of Thorin's clothing. It goes on for an eternal moment, the sound of bittersweet escape, and Thranduil shudders and falls still. His body is heavy and limp, his breathing swift and shallow—are his breaths slowly ebbing, are his hands cooling against Thorin’s body?

At last there comes the softest sound, the wondering murmur of Thranduil’s voice against Thorin’s jaw. “I live,” he says, and that is all, and they lie twisted together shaking with the nearness and mercy of death, trembling with the ever more grasping cold.

Thorin’s hands are growing numb; hours have passed, and midnight is approaching, and his breath escapes in clouds of icy steam. In his arms, still breathing, lies the shaking proof of a new thing, a possibility, which has risen between them. It may yet escape them in the oncoming cold of the fatal night; but for now they cling tightly, Thorin crushed for breath and wincing with the stabbing pain of his wounds but unwilling to let his lover go, and Thranduil continues to breathe and to move in small flutters of lip and eyelash against Thorin's skin.

He is not dead. Thranduil is not dead; the thought is like sunrise or like rescue or like the distant dream of hope that has been so long lacking in the world. For they are equals now, both doomed and both prisoners, both subject to the same awful fate—and Thranduil is free to love him or to let him die, and somehow he seems to have chosen Thorin in defiance of all sense or sanity.

Erebor, Thorin knows, hangs on a spider's thread, upon the whim of a bereaved prince whose choices are all overshadowed with death and loss. The very fate of Middle-Earth seems already decided, looming over them all like an executioner's axe; death follows them closely all about, soon to overtake them and destroy what little kindling hope they have found. But for this moment, against the cold, with warm skin and a beating heart, Thranduil lives, and the knowledge of it sends tears spilling from Thorin's eyes to freeze upon his cheeks in the intolerable, growing chill.  
  
They lie like this for hours, hoarding the last memories of sunlight and the slowly ebbing warmth of Thranduil's skin, until the cold becomes more than piercing and they both are numb and blunt-handed, until Thorin is frozen so deeply that he forgets what cold means and begins to feel as if he is nearly warm again, and the rising moon turns the shadows beneath Thranduil's eyes into purple bruises.

All is quiet. The stars soar over them, jewels in the high vaulted arches of heaven, glittering in smears and ribbons. Calm steals over Thorin's heart; for if Erebor, the last free land, falls to Mirkwood's squalor, will the stars not remain untouched? The battles to come, the blood to flow in rivers, seem small and petty beside the inextinguishable lights above. 

So easy, to slip into this passive darkness. Such small things, these disasters—how could anyone mind them?

Except that with each battle comes a hundred death-cries, a thousand broken hearts. Except that here, on the side of this mountain, two last breaths will be stolen from, perhaps, the last of the kings who could have stood against the Necromancer. Except that when the black hand of Mirkwood lies like a smothering cloud of smoke over the whole of Middle-Earth, then who will look at the stars?

There is a sound, like a drum or a rushing wind. There is a shadow that falls over them, then is gone, then returns, each time swift and tattered, like a flag across the faint starlight. Then another sound comes, like rock grinding and sliding on the cliffside above them, and then a voice like the peal of a falling boulder, laughing in satisfaction, and a scuffle on the stone; and small feet alight on the slab beside Thorin's head, and a small familiar hand shakes him by the shoulder.  
  
"Thought I'd never find you," says Bilbo.  
  
Thorin looks at him through frozen lashes as if seeing a ghost. There's no question: his hand is warm and his mouth is the same, curling at the corners; but his eyes are harder than before, lined with untold horrors and sorrows, and his face and his hands as he pulls Thorin upright are scarred and somehow twisted. And above him on the cliff, clinging with great claws by which the three of them are lifted to safety and borne into the deepening sky, is Smaug himself, the living fire-wurm.


	13. Chapter 13

The things that Thorin has dreaded, seeing the change in his old friend, seeing the dark spire of Mirkwood loom beneath them, have not come to pass, exactly. He is in a prison cell, certainly; but there are animal skins spread on the floor, and though the air is thick and hot and pounds with the rhythm of great machines, he has not been tortured—though Thranduil was carried away almost as soon as Smaug's claws settled on the slick black stone of Dol Goldur.

Even the memory of that flight leaves Thorin sick and shivering. The air that far above the earth is cold and thin, and though the furnace-heat of Smaug had warmed his battered flesh as he lay against the rippling scales, each breath had seemed to sap more life from him than it brought. Relieved of cold, his wounds throb; relieved of the imminence of death, his spirit aches. 

And more: the shape of Bilbo, strange in the moonlight, the curl of his hair as the wind batters it, the shape of his cheek when he leans to glance at them both. Thorin had never thought to see any such thing again in this life. He remembers Eagles, and the wild delight of rescue. He remembers Bilbo at Beorn's, his weary smile and the polite restraint with which he ate more bread and honey than any of them.

He does not now remember the expression which he glimpsed in the faint silver light, which told him before even the wheeling dark of Mirkwood yawned beneath them and the last hopes died in his heart. He  _does_  remember, with growing nausea, that Bilbo's face reminded him of Kili.

And now, an endless flight of narrow sticky steps below that high landing-place, Thorin struggles to pull himself upright from where the orcs have thrown him, none too gently, feeling blood seep from his wounds. "Where is Thr—the elf," he says, realizing nearly too late that Thranduil's name may be precious coin in the hours to come.

"The elf," says Bilbo, cocking his head. He is concealed by shadow, his voice almost drowned by distant muffled clanging. "I suppose you mean the  _elvenking_. I haven't been entirely shut away, all these years."

Between the two of them are bars; Thorin sags against them, exhaustion and bewilderment and despair sapping his strength. "Where is he," repeats Thorin.

"You're no safer than he is," shrugs Bilbo, in a voice that seems to suggest this is a comforting statement. "Don't bother yourself—you were very difficult to get and I intend to keep you both."

"How," begins Thorin, and realizes he hardly knows which questions to ask. "How did you find us?"

Bilbo says something, but the orcs are debating something in the corner, and their spitting voices grow loud. Bilbo waves an irritated hand at them, like a grocer shooing schoolboys, and they dutifully hush themselves and stand—well, crouch—at attention. Bilbo is not the orcs' captive, then. Thorin has an irrational glimmer of hope.

In perfect echo of Thorin's memory, Bilbo rocks on his heels with smugness, every inch the cat with cream in his whiskers. "I do have my resources," he says, and Thorin pictures the upthrust of his lower lip which demonstrates that he is merely playing at self-deprecation to conceal his pride. "And you were  _so_  thoughtful, to send me a letter telling me all about your prize. Of course we have a few eyes in Erebor, bless me, of course!"

"And on the mountainside?"

"My dragon friend has lovely sharp eyes," muses Bilbo. "His knowledge of the Lonely Mountain and its nooks and crannies—I never met a scholar so thorough. But enough about my brilliance! You'll need rest soon, and my master will have questions for  _you_  when you are strong enough for them."

Thorin drags himself upright, though it is a struggle to keep his feet even leaning on the bars. "I'll answer anything you like, if you bring me the elf," he says, and adds: "safe and unharmed, mind you, under my protection."

"You'll answer anything  _he_  likes," corrects Bilbo with a glance over his shoulder. "And so will Thranduil. Though your protection might count for a bit, since I think we have enough secrets from his people—the captives, I mean, the ones that have lived. Which is to say: if you talk, you might live, and he might as well, though you might not like it much."

"Is that how you survived," spits Thorin. "Talking? What secrets kept  _you_  alive?"

Bilbo laughs. "Oh, you've got it all wrong," he says, shaking his head. "Once you see him, you'll understand. You don't really keep secrets, not from  _him_. And anyway he gave me—" 

The words catch and hang in air, while Bilbo looks over his shoulder again, not to the door but toward the hewn stone, as if the wall is paper-thin and something stands ready to tear through it at any moment, something which only Bilbo can hear scratching at the far surface.

"Gave you what," prompts Thorin, and Bilbo sighs and comes closer, close enough that for the first time Thorin can really see his face, close enough that none of his articulation is lost in the pounding beat of distant machines. Thorin fights the urge to draw back; there is poison in that presence.

"He gave me a ring," says Bilbo.  
  
"A ring," says Thorin in disbelief. Is Bilbo speaking of marriage? Is he completely mad? What in Middle-Earth has he become?  
  
"To replace my other, which he took from me," says Bilbo, in a light, apologetic tone that chills Thorin to the bone, to see Bilbo's unconcern as the orcs behind him sneer and cluster and drool. There is a sickening light in his eyes. "I think," he adds, "that it was meant for a dwarf."  
  
He laughs, and there is not a shred of sanity in the sound. The orcs all laugh with him, like puppets, like the shadows of great teeth cast upon the walls. Bilbo's teeth have been filed to points.  
  
But he leans close, and the laughter is gone, and it takes Thorin a moment to realize that the tightness in his eyes is pain, is fear. "I am so sorry," he says. "I think it does not work as it should. It's too big for me, see? Meant for a dwarf. Something in a hobbit doesn't work right with its type. Something's still loose inside."  
  
There: through the madness, through the fear, there is a glimpse of an older Bilbo, an expression Thorin recognizes, a stubborn set to his mouth.  
  
"Let us go," he pleads. "Aren't we companions? I was your friend, Bilbo, I—"  
  
But Bilbo is shaking his head, withdrawing, and the orcs are beginning to drain from the room like filthy water soaking into the earth. "He wants you," says Bilbo, shaking his head. "I don't know what for. Probably for the same reason he stole your nephew from me, poor lad, probably for branding irons and whispering voices, to twist all your wants into wicked things, to make them stronger than you are. I can only imagine what he wants with the elf," and he shrugs, as if he is helpless to assist them, instead of a commander of orcs.   
  
"Please," says Thorin, hoarse and half out of his mind with pain and dread.  
  
The orcs are gone, and Bilbo retreats after them, smiling through his scarred lips. "His eye is on me," he says. "I loved you once, I did love you. I thought you must love me too. But his eye is on me, and so I need a war."  
  
With that he vanishes into the darkness of the hallway, and though Thorin screams and rattles the filthy bars of his cell and begs until his voice breaks, there is no more answer except the echo of an orc's cackle, far below.

Eventually he slumps to the floor, scarcely strong enough to crawl back to his heap of furs—where, thank Mahal, there is a bowl of fairly clean water and a hank of disgusting dry bread. He can hardly bring himself to eat or drink at first, sick at heart and terrified for Thranduil, but when the water touches his lips he discovers that he is half dead of privation, and soon he drifts away to sleep with an uneasy belly among the ratted furs, trying to capture between his fingers the memory of silken hair, trying to banish from his half-mad mind's eye the awful vision of Thranduil's blood streaked on black stone and the echo of Thranduil's stuttering, death-touched gasps from the times when Thorin hated him, or thought he hated him, or thought anything he felt could be as simple as hate.

 

* * *

The filthy orc-draught they give him does its work, and by morning Thorin emerges from profound slumber feeling nauseated and dehydrated, but stronger in body and with wounds that only ache instead of throbbing. Strange, he thinks, forcing himself to sip from the stagnant bowl of water left for him, that the orcs should have such effective medicine and still be so barbaric.

A little gobbler of an orc peeks into the room, cackles nastily, and disappears; in a matter of minutes the room has flooded with orcs, who chain him and push him about and drag him from his cell to follow another endless, teetering stair about a jagged tower.

Thorin pauses halfway up, ignoring the jabs of the orcs as just another bit of his misery—the side of the staircase has opened up into an unguarded gulf, a fifty-ell drop, and what it reveals (sickly sun through smoke-yellowed haze, twisting protrusions that suspend from scaffold to crane, black-fingered trees gasping over the edges of the filthy palistrade, everywhere the maggot-like movements of orcs clinging to the shadows). He cannot understand how the place stays up. The houses of men and elves have always seemed such flimsy things, swayed by every breeze, but the impossible angles and bizarre shapes of Dol Goldur imply things about this fortress's structure that are impossible. Or magical. Thorin's skin crawls.

A sharp strike in his back, at the kidney, and Thorin nearly topples; but he is a dwarf, and accustomed to deep places in the earth and dizzying plummets underfoot, and if they mean to unsettle him, they are disappointed. His mind is somewhere else—already lifting from unnatural architecture to unnatural skin and hair, to eyes that keep secrets and shift in his memory from haughtiness to sorrow.

If they have harmed Thranduil... Well. No use to swear that every one of them will pay, since Thorin is one dwarf and unarmed. If they have harmed Thranduil, Thorin will bear the knowledge of it and search for some way to protect him, and if they have slain his elven lover then Thorin will go to his death with a numb heart.

The squalor of that endless climb is incredible, and leaves him reeling when they shove him through a narrow door into a dark forbidding space, where the stark and elegant lines of black stone reticulations rise to a high sky-lit ceiling.

It is hard to imagine anyone choosing to live in a place like this, but in this chamber Thorin sees the longing of some unknown inhabitant for splendor. Doubtless it will be achieved, when the Necromancer is victorious and the world crushed beneath his heel.

The orcs push him to his knees and depart, gabbling nervously, and Thorin makes as if to struggle to his feet. There is a sound, metal scraping stone—there is an intake of breath, a hint of delight in a subvocal tone, and Thorin realizes he is not alone in that narrow hall. At the far end is a throne, and upon the throne a tall shape draped in heavy robes, a face bleached of normal tone, and languid hands resting upon armored knees with anticipation.

"You are the Necromancer," says Thorin, forcing himself to rise to his feet despite the agony of dread that settles about his heart. 

The figure laughs, rises, sweeps toward him, and Thorin marvels that he could have imagined that his earlier trepidation was true fear. The black terror of something beyond knowing takes him, and he hears his own voice groaning into a scream, feels his body buckling. "No," the creature replies, all dignity and grace, flattered but regretful. "Hardly that. You would not know my name now, dwarf, but I was once the Witch-King, high master of men. Do you know me? No? You shall, in a way, henceforth."

Thorin feels the icy chill of his presence like cold flickering flame against his skin, like the dry terror spreading in his throat and limbs. His eyes will not rise from the lovely stark slabs of the black granite floor, even when chill fingers seize him by the chin-locks of his beard and raise his face, like a lover seeking a kiss.

"Look at me," says the Witch-king, gentle, coaxing, but with steel behind it that cuts through Thorin's last scraps of will. He cannot help himself; his gaze lifts, passing over stonework and embroidered velvet and hoar-frosted mail until it settles, unwilling to take the final step, upon the Witch-king's mouth.

Something in Thorin's gut is screaming that his eyes must lie, that he is under a spell—but what he sees is clear as touching: the Witch-king's mouth is lustrous and shapely, the angle of his chin and jaw elegant as carved alabaster, the arrogant arch of his nose a masterwork. He looks  _created_ , as if some loving artist has dwelt upon each angle of his face with masterly devotion.

The fear lessens, though it does not disappear, and Thorin understands that an enchantment is being withdrawn. The spike of ice in his belly diminishes, and the quality of his fear becomes more raw, more present, more numinous. He dares to look directly into the Witch-king's eyes, which are palest blue, steel with radiant spokes of mithril. 

The Witch-king smiles at him, one-sided; then he withdraws and raises his hands, shaking back the bell-sleeves of his robe so that the mail beneath jingles, and claps his hands like thunder.

Tall orcs rush in, a different breed from the prison-tenders who brought him here, their faces almost fair and their arms filled with rough-draped bundles. The Witch-king stands in the midst of them as they rush about, unfolding creaking metal frames and laying long wicked instruments upon them, and to preserve himself from the horror of looking upon and understanding the machinery which rises about the room Thorin fixes his gaze upon the Witch-king's face, upon the diagonal curves of muscle which plunge down his throat to meet at the juncture of his clavicles, the same line he has so often admired upon Thranduil.

It sets him shaking, to think of Thranduil in the context of this lovely monster. It hurts him like a knife, to see those perfect lips part and watch the slick movement of tongue against teeth. He has seen hundreds upon thousands of men in his life, but nothing like this, nothing comparable to Thranduil's eldritch loveliness.

In some perverse way he clings to it as he is carried, scarcely resisting, to the cross-beams of the iron scaffold before him: he understands that the torture has begun already, that something crucial in his heart is under assault. He finds it within himself to pull back as the orcs attempt to tie him down, and in a moment the crushing, paralyzing dread falls over him again, suffocating and colder than ice on stone. He struggles to breathe as they bind him; his limbs are dead and nerveless and he can offer his captors no resistance.

When the eldritch fear retreats he is drowned in shame for the few moments before the Witch-king approaches him again. Then, still gasping, he feels the touch of a frozen hand upon his brow, and the slip of cold metal snaking beneath his collar—a knife, with which the Witch-king separates his rags of clothing from his body, cutting and plucking, fingers following the lines of severed cloth like blades in their own right. The knife rests for a moment over his ribcage, pressing—the skin does not part, but the sharpness is breathtaking, and soon the blade bites again across Thorin's belly, and again in the hollow of his elbow.

By the time Thorin is naked, he is a wreck of terror, and none of it magical in the least. His sweat pours like blood, and no harm has been done him yet, save for the lovely distant interest of the Witch-king's face which strips away his defenses and for the faint pink streaks of scored unbroken skin where the knife has pressed for a moment's threat.

"Now," breathes the Witch-king, turning from Thorin for a moment to choose a new tool, "now you will tell me whatever I ask, and agree to whatever I ask, and give me anything I ask of you."

Thorin does not waste his breath on defiance. The Witch-king nods at his silence, the tilt of his head an eerie echo of Thranduil's considering posture, and his voice is measured and easy: "I will not ask for secrets of state; we know them all. I will not ask you to betray your friends; you will betray them all, in time, and be glad of it. I ask you to betray yourself, Thorin of the line of Durin. What is it that you love most in all the world?"

Thorin's throat is nearly too dry to speak, and it gives him a moment to gather himself, to remember that he is being asked a question by a torturer and he must not tell the truth. "Erebor," he says, licking his lips. "My kingdom."

The Witch-king sighs. "Already we begin to lie," he says. "Perhaps your heart longed for Erebor once, but I see no love in your eyes just now." He turns, and smiles, and Thorin sees the light in his eyes before he sees the needle in his hands, slightly curved and gauged like a fine chainmail link.

Perhaps this is not the sort of truth to hide. "Erebor is more than a kingdom," chokes Thorin. "It is family—it is the tombs of my ancestors—"

"Ah," murmurs the Witch-king, feigning mournfulness. "How sad, that you think of these things and do not love them. I do know love, little one. I have loved deeper than your short lifespan can contain. Now:  _tell me what you love_." 

Thorin racks his head for answers. He will not allow himself to think of—of  _him_ , not with the lovely Witch-king's hands so near. He remembers how Kili was broken on that same passion, for—for  _him_ , and he understands now a shadow of how it was done.

Kili, he thinks. Kili, before the poisoned secrets of Erebor made them all mad. "My nephews," he says, with the full force of guilt and sorrow beneath the answer. "Fili and Kili, my boys."

For a moment it seems to work; the Witch-king considers him, gaze probing the shapes of Thorin's face and the dry swallow of his tongue. "I am not disappointed," he says, and with one hand he takes Thorin's nipple and draws it out from his chest as if preparing to pluck a lute-string. The needle descends; Thorin clenches his teeth, and manages merely to grunt as it passes through his flesh.

"Brave," says the Witch-king, approving, and something about his touch changes—his skin warms, flushes, radiant with heat—the needle sears, and in a moment Thorin is writhing with agony as his flesh burns around the penetrating needle.

It is over in seconds, and Thorin sags against the frame. He steels himself to resist answering again, but the Witch-king fetches another needle instead, and with this he plies Thorin's other nipple. The sensation is almost unbearable this time, from the pinch of skin-breaking to the pluck of re-emergence, and when the needle burns him this time Thorin bites his cheek bloody to keep from groaning aloud.

The question is not repeated. The Witch-king twists the needles in his skin, and Thorin feels sick at the tug of metal within burned skin; then a dull, unthreatening probe appears, and Thorin grits his teeth as he watches it heat to dull red, the tip like the head of a pin but ready to sear him.

Slowly, the Witch-king tries him, burning tiny circlets of agony from the pit of Thorin's throat down his sternum, all the while without repeating the question—though when the Witch-king reaches his navel, he stands back for a moment to fix Thorin with a pleased stare and a questioning look.

Thorin searches for an answer that will satisfy, but pain has drawn away everything that is not sensation or truth, and there is nothing left in him safe to spill. He gasps through his teeth, and the Witch-king's mouth tenses with delight, and the burning metal descends again.

Down his belly the line of fire descends; Thorin can see at this distance the tiny blisters that rise in its wake, and the flecks of char that lift away. The effort of not screaming makes his jaw and throat ache, but he holds himself against the pain, even when the Witch-king presses his implement of torture through the hair of Thorin's groin, searing a foul smoke into the air before even beginning to burn his skin. He recoils convulsively, and the Witch-king gives him no time to recover before burning him again, and again, each time closer—

Just as Thorin is steeling himself for the burning of his cock-skin, the implement withdraws, and the Witch-king turns to retrieve more needles, his long white hair  _like Thranduil's, cobweb and silk, Mahal strike me dead_  dragging against the velvet of his robe and catching in his mail.

Needles, more needles, a dozen or more of them, each threaded through the skin of his cock in shallow patterns, cruel upon the flaccid length—no burning, but the weight becomes torment, and soon Thorin is groaning with each breath, struggling not to scream. The Witch-king leans close and breathes into his ear, his voice so smooth and sweet: "I know what you love, little one. I know he is here, in my dungeons; he is untouched, as yet, but oh... he will be, Thorin, and these polite torments you bear so easily will be nothing besides the broken flesh and bone he suffers."

"Don't touch him," hisses Thorin, and the Witch-king laughs and withdraws, reaching for yet another implement: a long screw-threaded shaft, the sort of thing that a skilled craftsman might drive through thick leather with an auger. Thorin feels the strength go out of his thighs, and yet he jerks in his bonds, fearing what must come next.

He misses the other thing in the Witch-king's hands until it is clasped about his shaft, and the irony of is it cruel as anything yet done to his flesh: it is a ring like the band he once bound about Thranduil's shaft, and it serves the same purpose, though it is much more tight and hurts him in its constriction. To his horror, his cock grows rigid, the blood unable to return through the painful band; and when it is fully hard, purple and aching through no desire of his own, the Witch-king laughs and strokes it, his hand almost warm against the wealth of curved needles that jut from the flesh and drag and twist under the pressure of that palm. Slow beads of blood appear and become trickles as the Witch-king tugs one needle or another, as he snaps his fingers lightly against the flesh and leaves Thorin hissing and twisting in anguish; then the long thin screw-bit reappears, and Thorin pants with horror as the Witch-king presses it into his cockslit like a key into a lock.

It scrapes, going down. The feeling is indescribable, painful with an edge of wrongness that makes Thorin's belly clench. He does not twist it in, as if flighting a drill-hole, merely presses it until it sinks further than Thorin would have thought possible. 

He knows what is coming next, and his face falls slack and pale and sweating with anticipation. The Witch-king flicks his finger against it, sending jags of pain coursing up Thorin's tortured shaft, and whispers:

"Tell me his name, little one. Scream for him."

Thorin feels the course of heat in the Witch-king's hand as it rises, struggles to prepare himself for the flash of heat, cannot draw breath—the first blushing warmth of the metal begins—he kicks uselessly against the bonds, twists in vain, feels the scrape and the rising temperature—and he is screaming before the heat even rises, screaming Thranduil's name, screaming until his voice is broken and his body is breathless and he realizes there has been no true burn at all, only the threat, only the laugh of delighted triumph now ringing in his ears and the realization that Kili must have been very strong, for the Witch-king to need to break his fingers.

"Now," croons the Witch-king, "tell me  _why_  you love him, tell me what his beauty is like to you, how you want to use him." He bends close, and his long lovely white hair pulls against the velvet and mail as before, a few strands breaking loose to fall like limp spider-strands and trail in tickling lines of ice across Thorin's breast.

Thorin has no more strength to speak, but the crawling sense of violation is stronger than the pain, and he wants to speak but he wants to guard this part of himself with his very life. He stares at the fallen hairs, white as Thranduil's but dropped from their master unbidden, as Thranduil's never will; and he shakes his head, a slight shudder at first but gaining strength until he manages to roll his head from side to side in desperate denial.

The Witch-king stares at him, his fingers still clasping the threaded rod, as if seeing him for the first time. "Very strong indeed," he says. "When you learn to bend your will, you will be a worthy recipient for the gift my Master meant to give your nephew."

"What gift is that," pants Thorin, "an easy death?"

"You set your price so humbly," wonders the Witch-king. "Dol Goldur needs a dwarf-king, little one. Your... hobbit-thing serves, for now, but in the end the ring wants a dwarf, and one of the line of Durin if one such can be had. Bilbo assured us you were a better choice, but I had wondered... he is capable of greed, that little beast, but I see now he was right."

"You speak in riddles," spits Thorin.

"And you will speak in screams," smiles the Witch-king. "Now tell me, child of Durin:  _how do you love him?_ "

 

* * *

 

 

Eventually, Thorin is carried back to his cell by orcs, his skin streaming in a hundred places with thin trickles of blood where needles were withdrawn, his blisters rasping against the rough cloth of the tunic he has been given, his groin aching as if crushed. No tool of torment remains upon him, and after an orc-draught he feels the blood begin to clot and scab; but he shakes, staring and nearly paralyzed, for hours after he is delivered back to his cell.

Perhaps two hours have passed. He is whole of body, save for superficial wounds; he is unbruised, promised only the most trivial of scars, but the orcs were forced to carry him down from the tower, and he weeps into the animal skins as he is battered by recollection.

 _I love the shape of his arms_ , he had said.  _I love the way he shivers when touched. I love the shape of his mouth when he smiles unexpectedly. I love the sway of his hair when I play the harp. I love the scent of him, like oaks and grass and pine-needles._

He loves, he loves, he has betrayed himself and Thranduil alike, and earned no stay of torment for either of them. He has spilled his love in frantic gouts of terror like piss upon the ground, and found it twisted at every point, the Witch-king tainting every edge of it. Love and torment, the things he has done to Thranduil and that have been done to him, the spite he felt and the longing to hurt and the clutching greed of the flesh. 

He is so  _unclean_.

Thorin hopes that sleep will evade him, with its threat of dreams and memories, but all too soon he finds himself slipping away, and he wonders if it is dream or reality that he can almost hear Thranduil's voice whispering his name.


	14. Chapter 14

Kneeling on the black stone floor, Thorin aches. There is blood crusted on his thumbnail, and he stares at it as he tests the fabric of his tunic with the ragged nail-edge. The cloth is clean; he has been thoroughly bathed, and his hair left loose to dry.

His orc captors have brought him to this room and left him here on his knees, and though the room is empty now, Thorin does not dare to stir. He does not know what he is waiting for—more torture? Death? Something worse? There is a creeping chill in his heart, and a dark empty place where no hope remains.

Windows line the jagged walls, up high. Torches flicker in wrought-iron sconces, and even the sound of orc-speech from outside is far and faint. Had he the heart for it, he could climb, he could wrench the metal from its housing, he could arm himself—however crudely—against the return of his captors. But he is broken now, marked with pinpoint brands and needle-sticks and even (after days of torture) striped along his collarbones with razor-cuts in perfect parallel rank, smarting with crusted salt.

And he fears, more than he has imagined possible, the Witch-king’s touch and the sibilant questions that fall from his lips. Dwarves are not easily cowed, but the memory of the piercing fear that is the Witch-king’s ready tool… the memory alone unnerves him, unmans him, leaves him shaking and steadying his breath.

So he does not run, nor does he rise from his kneeling, until he hears the sound of footsteps behind him. Heavy footsteps of orcs in steel, who march in rank and line the room, tall broad-chested orcs with brutal faces and observant eyes, orcs of almost noble bearing…

Thorin almost misses the other footsteps until they are upon him, and the Witch-king’s fingertips trail like ice upon his cheek. Bottomless fear grips him, just for a moment, as if he needed the reminder; then the Witch-king smiles and steps a little further, to stand tall and dread before him.

“Stand,” says the Witch-king, and Thorin obeys, feeling the flexion of his knees like knives in his flesh after so long kneeling. “You are honored,” his captor continues, “by the presence of your lord, and if you bear yourself well you may be honored still further. Turn, and make your obeisance,” and with this the Witch-king glides in his robes along the edge of Thorin’s sight as Thorin turns and sees and falls back to his knees like a man pierced by a spear.

The shape of him is both horrible and magnetic; all the light in the room bends to him, and every exhalation seems to pull some part of Thorin’s soul from its roots and carry it like a feather toward that unbearable presence. Thorin has pictured a wizard, a twisted wizened creature spattered with dried gore, spittle-lipped and mad-eyed—nothing like this, the mighty form with its burned and gashed skin, the severe and mighty shapes of that ruined face, the hunger in his heart to be laid bare to that awful gaze.

He is not beautiful. He does not need to be.

Thorin understands, now, what Bilbo meant. The Witch-king’s fear vanishes into a distant haze; the gaze of the Necromancer is a sickening force, flaying him to the bone. This… this thing, this creature, could ask him any question and read the answer upon his face, this monstrous angel.

He recovers himself slowly, as if struck on the head, and comes to his senses gasping, with his face pressed to the floor. Sweat drips along his cheekbones and lines his lips with salt.

The Necromancer is amused by him, chuckles at him. “Spirit, but no defiance,” he says, as if Thorin might have offered any resistance to him. “He kneels beautifully. The halfling was right to covet him.”

“A candidate, then,” queries the Witch-king with lazy curiosity. “I have found him strong, but pliable, although I fear my crude mechanisms will soon press him beyond strength.”

The Necromancer steps forward, and Thranduil understands that he is being examined. “Surely he can be hurt more _meaningfully_ ,” says the great bell-voice above him.

“Oh yes,” hisses the Witch-king. “We have the means very close by, in fact. If he resists, we shall… _hurt him_ … until he wishes we were merely hurting his body.”

Thorin can _hear_ the smile on the Necromancer’s face. “We shall see,” he muses, “if he can be remade into a useful tool, where the other failed.” The other. _Kili_.

The Witch-king strides over to Thorin and, with one thin powerful hand, grasps him by the hair at the nape of his neck and pulls him upright, so that his face is lifted for the Necromancer to see. Thorin does not resist. “We shall see,” the Witch-king agrees, and a cluster of orcs emerges from the shadows, bearing a weakly struggling burden.

Thorin sees how their hands clutch at their burden, how greedily they pull against each others’ grasps, how each of them feels they must own the thing they carry. Any one of them would, he recognizes, gladly knife his fellows for the chance to keep this treasure for himself, to touch and hoard and hurt at his own whim.

And Thorin feels kinship in this enmity, for he too feels the stirrings of rage and need and desperation as he sees the untangled banner of white hair fall across the orcs’ sinewed arms. Even with the eye of the Necromancer upon him, he wants Thranduil as a drowning man wants air. He cries out, and Thranduil renews his struggles, and a moment later the Witch-king barks an order and the orcs reluctantly loose their burden, baring their teeth in jealous hisses as they back away.

Thorin is blind with terror and wrath, twisting in the Witch-king’s grip. Even when the fear comes, stealing his breath and freezing his gut, Thorin’s eyes roll like a frenzied horse’s to keep Thranduil in sight, and his legs strain and tense to push him against the Witch-king’s grip at the roots of his hair even as his bones turn to water.

Then the fear is gone, like a snuffed candle, replaced with more mundane terrors; Thorin catches his breath, shouts— _Thranduil_ —and the Witch-King’s hand closes over his mouth, crushing the breath in his lungs. Thranduil, for his part, lies half-propped on an elbow, breathing hard and spring-tight in every line, and his eyes are locked on Thorin’s as if he means to read his thoughts.

Thorin, struggling for breath as the Witch-king laughs gently into his ear, has never felt so bare. The Necromancer paces around him, observing to the very pulse of his heart; Thranduil lies wrapped in the filthy cloth he was carried in, suspicion and fear and anticipation tensing his jaw and his fists as he watches. The Witch-king gently, delicately fills Thorin’s mouth with a strip of cloth and wraps the gag with another, tying it at the back of his head with odd tenderness, like a man adorning his pet with a ribbon.

“Now,” he murmurs in Thorin’s ear. “Look at him, your beautiful toy. Was he not born to be owned? How, then, has he come to own you?”

Thorin cannot speak; the cloth is dry and rough against his tongue, and he swallows reflexively without result. He feels his nostrils flare. He cannot stop staring at Thranduil.

“My lord offers you a gift beyond anything you can possibly comprehend,” the Witch-king continues. “You are a prisoner now, doomed to torment and slow death; you are offered a throne, a dominion, and eternal life to enjoy it, with all the pretty playthings you may desire… and you may desire many playthings, in time. For now, do you not wish to keep this little sweetmeat?” He gestures to Thranduil, and Thorin feels his body jerk helplessly toward his lover, answer enough to elicit a smirk.

At Thorin’s other side, the Necromancer pauses in his circling, and his voice rings clear despite his scarred and blackened skin. “I am a jealous master, young Oakenshield,” he says. “Look me in the eye—"

Thorin complies, tearing his gaze from Thranduil’s form, and the Necromancer seems to fill his vision to the burning brim: his defiled features still betraying the angles of his powerful face, his brow crowned in a smoldered metal fillet that binds back steely locks of hair— "Yes,” murmurs the Necromancer, “I am jealous, and I will not share my servants. Do you love him?”

The cloth in his mouth feels like armor; Thorin knows the truth is plain in his eyes, and he hopes it is enough. The situation is precarious, the potential cost so high-- he cannot bring himself to nod, to make any movement at all. The Necromancer sighs.

“Answer my lord Sauron,” the Witch-king spits, shaking Thorin roughly, and Thorin groans in his throat and nods in defeat.

The Necromancer—Lord Sauron—does not quite smile, but satisfaction eases his features. “We will see how much you love him,” he says, and nods to the Witch-king, who releases his grasp on Thorin and lets him stagger into standing on his own two feet. Thorin’s hands rise to the gag, and the Witch-king pinches him cruelly beneath the ear, nails nearly breaking the thin skin.

“Now do remember what we’ve discussed,” he says, in conversational tone. “My lord wishes to rule you, or to hurt you, and we are running out of ways to hurt you. See how vulnerable your lover is, naked in his rags? Do you see?”

Thorin tears his eyes away to look, and sees that Thranduil is bare-armed and that the rough cloth scarcely covers him against the stone—and he is horrified to feel a spike of desire, a lust driven by some deeper and more awful passion. He wants to tear away the rags and kiss the skin beneath; he wants to carry Thranduil away and press his hands to every inch of that muscle and bone, to wash his body of the filth of orc-captivity and press himself closer than mere embrace.

“Hurt him,” says the Witch-king lightly. “Hurt him, and make a good show of it for my lord, or we will… _hurt_ you.”

Ice floods Thorin’s veins. _Merely hurting his body_ , he remembers, and understands what threat has been made, and goes to Thranduil’s side in a horrified daze.

Thranduil looks up at him with unreadable eyes as Thorin unwraps him, gently, exposing the long lines of his body and staring down as if seized with gold-lust at the bared flesh before him. He hears the intake of the Witch-king’s breath (he feels sick at the thought that he recognizes it so easily), and looks over his shoulder to the Necromancer, Sauron, who will be his lord, who is buying him so easily with the coin of Thranduil’s safety.

He cannot speak, though his tongue shifts against the cloth and he groans deep in his distress. Sauron, for his part, simply waits, expectant; the Witch-king hums impatiently, and Thorin turns to find Thranduil looking up at him with wide eyes, with quiet terror creasing his brow.

But he cannot speak, and his new lord will own him as he will own all of Middle-Earth in time, and if he can find it in himself to be cruel now… perhaps he can protect the one thing in all this foul and dying world worth protecting. Perhaps.

He remembers the Witch-king’s nails breaking his skin, and he bends down-- his eyes locked with Thranduil’s, begging him to understand—and palms his shoulder, smooths his thumb across the skin, and digs his nails into the muscle of Thranduil’s shoulder.

Thranduil jerks terribly, pulling away, a cry spilling from his throat, and Thorin hates himself and wishes for death and scratches him, hard, from collarbone to nipple, gripping Thranduil’s shoulder with his other hand to prevent him from escaping.

His fingernails leave red lines that bead with tiny spangles of blood. Thranduil tries to scramble away, but Thorin stops him, kneeling with his shins across Thranduil’s thighs so that his weight pins Thranduil to the floor. Behind him, he hears a thin high sound like a moan, the Witch-king expressing his approval.

Thorin smears the blood as it wells and pinches again, this time just above the nipple, to the Witch-king’s evident delight; but Sauron has made no indication of interest, and Thorin knows who he is meant to please.

He has none of the tools that were used on him, and he has no stomach for any of them. Even these small torments—he pulls Thranduil’s hair, caresses his scalp to ease his guard and then pulls again hard and fast to make him hiss with pain—turn his stomach, unable as he is to explain them to Thranduil. And Thranduil, for his part, does not look at him with betrayal in his eyes (after all, he knows that Thorin has been tortured, and surely he can see as the prison-tunic slides with Thorin’s motion where needles and brands have tried his flesh), but with an awful detachment, a new coldness.

Thranduil does not blame Thorin, it seems; but just as clearly, he believes that Thorin is protecting himself, that Thorin can only protect himself by hurting Thranduil, and that Thorin is doing it willingly.

Thorin had meant to pinch Thranduil’s nipple next, but he finds himself thumbing it instead, and to his astonishment it tightens beneath his touch and Thranduil shivers under him. Even more, Thorin feels Thranduil stir against his thigh, and sees how shame and terror flood Thranduil’s face, and behind him hears Sauron breathe deep, interested at last.

Surely the Necromancer himself cannot be fascinated by anything so tawdry as watching his minions fondle their captives. Indeed, shifting so that he can see his two tormentors in his peripheral vision, Thorin notes that his gentle touches bore them both, and that mere pain is not enough to truly satisfy them.

They wish, as he once wished, to see unwilling submission, to watch Thranduil’s body betray him, to have Thorin break and soothe and break him again until Thranduil is stripped of all dignity and all trust.

The thought comes to him that Sauron may see his thoughts and hopes written upon his face, but that even the greatest of lords may see what he wishes to see, if it is offered. And to this end, Thorin strokes Thranduil’s nipple until he shivers, then pinches it without warning so that Thranduil cries out and tries to squirm away, then strokes it again until Thranduil’s muffled cries turn into moans.

Yes. This is what his captors want. He can hear the heaviness of their breath, see how they lean subtly forward. His palms follow the shape of Thranduil’s belly and rest on his hipbones, where Thorin digs in his nails and leaves twin paths of red from the sides of his buttocks spiraling around to the front of his thighs, just above the knee. The effect is terrible, lovely. Thorin slaps the clawmarked thighs once, with flat palms, and Thranduil makes a terrible sound that trails into another moan as Thorin’s fingertips trace back up and drag across his cock.

At the first touch there, Thranduil arches his back, and his arousal grows and lies heavy on his belly. Thorin does not give him long to enjoy the gentle touch, pausing for a quick sharp slap with the fingers on Thranduil’s length, which elicits a shattered sound of distress but also gains a sigh of satisfaction from the Necromancer and, paradoxically, makes Thranduil’s cock grow harder in a moment.

“He betrays himself,” says the Necromancer, with an intensity in his voice that tightens the fear in Thorin’s spine like a vise. Has he given away some secret? Are any secrets left to be kept? But the Necromancer continues: “See, how he loves his own degradation,” and Thorin understands that he is speaking of Thranduil, and he wants to spit in that angelic face. He can tell, though it seems the Necromancer cannot, that Thranduil responds to the closeness of his own body, that his desire is not for humiliation but in spite of it, for touch—

Is this the secret? Is this truly the limit of that all-seeing eye? Thorin tests his theory, and instead of the next cruel infliction he strokes Thranduil’s cock hard, forcefully, evoking a helpless thrust of his lover’s hips and a sound from his throat that might almost be pain. Just over his shoulder, where he can hardly see, Thorin senses subtle movement: the Necromancer’s lips part, and the incline of his jaw changes, and Thorin knows he is seeing some other moment of submission and humiliation, some other history of unwanted desire.

And though he sees all, and pierces all secrets with his gaze—perhaps he, like all mortal men, sees what he wishes to see.

Thorin spreads his hand across the marks his nails have made, and his eyes meet Thranduil’s with no hint of calculation or force, only a silent plea of apology. There is only a moment for this, no time to beg forgiveness or absolution, only to offer his own fault; but he knows his lover’s face. Though Thranduil’s expression is set in a mask with only the faint flush of arousal to give it the lie, there is a tightness about his mouth that is neither fear nor defiance, and a shape to his eyes that Thorin has only seen a few times before. It is the look of a comrade in arms, the look of faint trust that gives him a glimmer of hope.

But he is no Lord Sauron, to read a heart from a glance. He can only let his horror, his regret, show for a moment in his eyes, and then he hardens himself again and spreads his hands across Thranduil’s chest in hungry possession and strokes the breadth of his ribs and belly until Thranduil gasps and arches his back wantonly. Thighs, hips, buttocks—Thorin palms him avariciously, watching him respond, and wishes his mouth were free to explore as well.

The Necromancer enjoys Thranduil’s abject desire, it seems, and even praises Thorin’s work with small sounds as he strokes and pulls and teases Thranduil’s flesh; but the Witch-king at last groans with frustration and sweeps alongside them to kneel, to lift and support Thranduil’s head and shoulders upon his own knees, and to take up the pain-giving that Thorin had hoped to spare Thranduil.

Thorin knows the cruel touch of those fingers, the gleeful sharpness of the long nails creasing his skin and the spikes of agony that follow from each vicious jab into a pressure point. He wants to tear the Witch-king’s hands from his lover’s flesh, but even as Thranduil shudders away from that touch with gooseflesh rising and drops of red springing up where the Witch-king has left his crescent-marks, Thorin is still too weak, too flesh-bound, too broken to fight.

Instead he focuses on pleasure, on outstripping the pain with his own touch, and though Thranduil’s hardness flags at first, soon under Thorin’s hands he is shuddering with a very different urge. Caught between the Witch-king’s scratches (which welt the sides of his neck now, and pull his nipples tight with pain) and Thorin’s worship (which has brought slow oozing droplets to smear across the head of his cock, under each insistent stroke of Thorin’s fist), Thranduil is a thing of pity and sublime glory.

It is not enough. The Necromancer moves to pace about them, to watch this thing unfold, and Thorin can feel his approval, his melancholy pleasure, like a blanket of dread; the Witch-king must feel it too, and it maddens him. He presses his teeth, white and even, against Thranduil’s throat and bites.

Too much. They may both die for his boldness, but Thorin cannot watch Thranduil be made a slave to this beautiful monster. His possessive snarl is muffled by cloth and dry tongue, but there is no mistaking his meaning, and even as the Witch-king’s head snaps up to stare at him in disbelief, the storm-surge of unnatural fear sends cold sweat springing from his skin and threatens to fell him where he kneels astride Thranduil’s thighs.

The Necromancer laughs. Frozen with crushing dread, Thorin can only wait for the death-blow—but there is an unspoken word hanging in the air, a pressure of will, and the Witch-king withdraws almost entirely, his fingernails still digging into Thranduil’s shoulder but his mouth closed in tight rage and the sadistic delight fading from his face as the fear retreats again.

“So bold,” murmurs the Necromancer. “And so _jealous_. I think I will have you after all, little king.”

The Witch-king bites his lip with spite; his nostrils flare with indrawn breath, and he objects with false sweetness: “Perhaps a token of his devotion, in exchange for your favor? Perhaps… a sacrifice?”

A coward, a monster, a liar, a madman—Thorin is, nonetheless, no fool. He knows now what the Necromancer wishes to see, and how to give it; and he knows what the Witch-king hopes to take from him, and he hopes in turn to keep it. Thranduil may not forgive him, but Thorin will die unforgiven before he sees that white body broken for the Witch-king’s pique.  _I would rather die_ , Thranduil had said once,  _and pretend that you will protect me, and die believing it_.\ _  
_

He leans forward, the weight of his body dragging hard against Thranduil’s cock, and thrusts his first two fingers into the elvenking’s mouth. His meaning is taken, and Thranduil’s eyes widen with shock, then hood as Thorin rolls his hips in a movement designed to bring pleasure, and warning. Thranduil swallows around his fingers, and Thorin rolls his fingertips across the sandpaper-velvet of tongue and the melting ghost of cheek and withdraws them slicked with Thranduil’s saliva.

Shocked silence falls. If Thorin, with his small hoard of misused medical tomes, knows the frailty of elves in the face of violation, surely these angelic creatures of nightmare must understand what he means to do. He would himself, if he had not spent so many months with his hands and mouth so close to Thranduil’s skin, be shying even now from murder.

But the memory of a mountaintop and the nearness of death lies between them, and Thorin knows he lives now only by the immortal warmth of Thranduil’s flesh. The cues and limits of Thranduil’s body he knows as no other save Thranduil himself, and he alone—save Thranduil—knows that some boundary between them has broken, and that Thranduil may not die of this, though certainly he will not forgive.

He clings to the thought as the Witch-king hisses in triumph and as the Necromancer stops still to watch, and as he sits back on his haunches and roughly spreads Thranduil’s legs and presses at the tight entrance below his ballocks until it twitches and settles and admits him, two fingers at once.

Thranduil goes rigid, taut from curled toes and clenched fists to the cords of his throat, legs still sprawled where Thorin put them but stiff and trembling. A mewl escapes him, and his brow draws tight in wretched pleasure.

His breathing is shallow, but no more shallow than it was under Kili’s assault. His heart beats in his breast slowly, but with such force that it pulses the muscle like a drum. Thorin pushes deep, a slow steady thrust, and crooks his fingers—does not find what he is seeking just yet—wraps his hand around Thranduil’s cock and strokes—

Spasms race through Thranduil’s limbs. He is white as a sheet, and he groans as he arches his head back against the unwelcome cushion of the Witch-king’s thighs. Thorin withdraws, thrusts again, lets his fingers glide—ah, there. Thranduil sobs with the shock of it, rolls up into Thorin’s fist, catches the same spot of pressure on the backstroke, and shudders in helpless undulation.

Clear liquid drips over Thorin’s fingers with each milking motion; the tight hot smooth-grained silk of Thranduil’s opened hole is delicious around his fingers. The burning heat reassures him, remembering the cold of encroaching death and the way Thranduil’s feet and hands had purpled and mottled in his torment before. Indeed, by the clench and tremor of the muscle and skin beneath and about his hands, Thorin can tell that Thranduil is far closer, far more desperate, than he is betraying to their captors.

For what he sees is Thranduil’s gaze turning wide and glassy, and his arms unfurling limp, and the shallowing of his breath, a perfect simulation of the fainting death-pall of a violated elf; but what he feels is throbbing liquid warmth, twitching response to his stimulus, and he recalls how Thranduil has submitted to him before to earn him power as a protector. Hope wells up in him, twisting and tainting as it rises, colored by the hatred he bears himself for this act and by the loathing that Thranduil must feel for him, even as he writhes in his pleasure and defilement.

It almost obscures the shift of Sauron’s gaze, and Thorin does not understand why the strength has gone out of him and why he is shaking with utter terror until it comes to him that Sauron, the Necromancer himself, has placed one of his mauled charred hands upon his shoulder and clasped him there like a father congratulates his son.

“You need not break your plaything on my account,” he says, and the Witch-king withdraws abruptly, letting Thranduil’s head fall to the flagstones. “It is enough that you are willing to put on a show even to the risk of his death. I wonder, in fact, that he is still alive—many have died for less. Perhaps he wishes he _were_ dead?”

For Thranduil had let his guise of death-pall go, and fallen into the familiar distress of denial, grinding his teeth and thrusting against the air, clenching and releasing his fists and groaning for release.

“Beautiful,” muses Sauron, his thumb moving soothingly over Thorin’s shoulder in a way that makes him feel like his whole body is defiled and eternally unclean. “Few mortals have such a keen eye for suffering. Do not be deceived,” he adds conversationally, releasing Thorin at last and nodding to the Witch-king, who rises and gestures in turn to the orc guards about the room. “You may yet become a favorite, little king, but for today you have earned a great enough prize for your satisfaction. I grant you your life, and the life of your toy, until you win my favor or lose it entirely.”

With this, he departs, and despite the rough hands of orcs hauling him upright and the vicious sneer of the Witch-king, Thorin feels the absence of the Necromancer like an enormous burden lifted. Even Thranduil, curling on his side to cradle his unfulfilled arousal and grimacing in the extremity of his need, seems to breathe easier with that presence diminished.

 _I would rather die than hurt you,_ Thorin wants to say, and his tongue moves against the gag; but the cohort of orcs that first brought Thranduil returns to wrap him in rags and bear him away, and though Thorin kicks and twists in his bonds as the guards restrain him, it is no use.

Once Thranduil is gone, the Witch-king turns to face Thorin, and the look on his face is a thing of utter and unholy delight. “You did well,” he croons, sweeping across the room and drawing his face very close to Thorin’s own. “Very well, although you have much to learn if you will ever be a true dwarf of my lord’s service. But such _games_ you play,” he adds thoughtfully, and with his wicked smile he lets his veil of fear descend until Thorin loses the strength in his knees and topples to the ground, half kneeling and half fainting.

“Leave him there,” commands the Witch-king, “and bring me my needles.” The commotion of cackling orc-speech fills the air; rough hands release Thorin’s elbows, and he sags to the floor, buried under unnatural fear so immense that he feels his heart must stop, groaning through his gag, knowing what tortures will come.

He can hear the assembly of the cross, the brazier, the snapping and slithering of ropes; but in his heart there is a small spark of defiance, of hope, and it kindles again to a slight flickering flame as he sees—spooled across the pavement, lone and silver and bright—a single fallen hair.


	15. Chapter 15

Thorin remembers a time when pain was unusual, even extraordinary, a thing to be outlasted and overcome. He can recall periods of weariness that stretched for months, days and nights of longing for sleep, aching muscles and joints that whispered of age approaching swiftly.

Now, after weeks in the bowels of Dol Goldur, Thorin can scarcely put one foot before the other; the distant thrum of exhaustion drowns out each moment of sensation and thought in turn. Pain rips and stings and unfurls throughout his body with each movement, and he bears it as he bears the nightmare of sleeplessness, one awful blinking minute at a time.

And yet, even though the last pitched bucket of cold filthy water has not yet dried on his tunic, even though the cuts and needle-marks and bruised fingernail-brands are still scabbed and given to bleeding, he can tell that the stair where he trudges one foot before another is something unusual, something special.

Dwarves are masters of architectural sleight. Thorin has overseen, as king, the construction of balcony-bridges thin and austere as bowstrings, of looming vaulted ceilings supported by massive columns balanced on delicate wasp-waists of stone, of doors which swing open and closed at the touch of a finger and which weigh more than a week’s worth of grain for all Erebor.

He has never seen anything like this. The whole of the tower is hidden from him by virtue of its mere mass, and yet the lines of its tension seem unnatural, the dispersion of its weight only suitable for a building of superb flexibility. Perhaps the Necromancer is building with something stronger and more supple than iron and stone—sword-steel, perhaps? On such a scale? Thorin shivers.

Into a tall, bleak hall of oily black surfaces the orcs lead and push him, up an impressive but too-broad curling staircase. Thorin can scarcely find the energy to carry himself forward; but somehow he finds himself at the doors of what can only be a throne room, shivering from the chill in the air.

The doors open, and the morning sun strikes him full in the face and blinds him for a moment. Through tall windows of dark glass, the sun’s rays are distorted as if Thorin is drowning beneath black water, but still powerful enough to crown the Necromancer’s standing form with gold and blood.

At the sight of him, his ruined face and his massive shoulders turning to expose Thorin to his view, Thorin feels his knees buckle and sees the floor rising toward him. “Stand,” commands the Necromancer, and though Thorin strains to obey his body is simply too weary to rise.

The orcs pull him upright, and their fingers on his skin are like bands of iron, bruising where they go. One cackles as he grips Thorin’s unbraided hair, craning Thorin’s neck to the side; another fingers Thorin’s collarbone as he grasps his shoulder, hissing in Thorin’s ear.

The Necromancer does not approach; this is a formal audience. “He is weakened,” murmurs that compelling voice, and Thorin realizes they are not alone with the orcs as the Witch-king’s familiar tones reply:

“Dwarves heal slowly, my lord.”

Some signal is made, and Thorin finds himself dragged closer. Thorin anticipates the orc-draught at any moment, and steels himself for the burning choke, but instead the Necromancer’s hand comes down—almost touching, a benediction—and a faint rush of energy surges through his bones. He can feel the hum of sleep retreating.

“Not all of my skills draw blood,” says the Necromancer by way of explanation, and motions again; the orcs retreat with their burden, and in a moment Thorin finds himself able to stand. Raising his voice, the Necromancer adds: “I require him in good health, and sound of mind. Do you not recall how the other was broken before I could use him, how you shattered the tool before it came to my hand? Do not think I have forgotten. Save your needles and tongs for your own servants henceforth.”

Relief steals the breath from Thorin’s lungs for the space of a minute. Surely this Sauron favors him now? Surely he is a lord worth serving, if he spares his servants torture?

“I only prepared him for—”

The will of Sauron moves, and the Witch-king falls silent, though his throat works furiously. Thorin begins to understand what drives his clever fingers to pinch and probe and cut.

But the Eye wanders from him, and another voice rises from nearby, more familiar and thus more bitter. “My dearest lord,” says Bilbo, taking a knee at the foot of the dais. “I am, as ever, at your service.”

There is a question in his voice, behind the fervor. The Necromancer looks down at him with great consideration, his burned brow furrowing. “As ever,” he muses, and Bilbo rises and nods, rocking back on his heels to look up at him.

The Necromancer seems not to be bothered by this audacity. “I have given you great burdens to bear,” he says, and his voice is nearly tender. “Some greater than others, and always you have served me.”

“I do try,” agrees Bilbo, puffing out his chest a bit.

“Better, perhaps, than you know,” the Necromancer continues, his gaze straying to the great wall of glass and beyond, toward the East. “You have prevented a major… distraction, perhaps even a war.”

Where Thorin stands, seemingly forgotten, he can see the stricken expression spread across Bilbo’s face, there and gone in a moment. By the time the Necromancer’s gaze returns, Bilbo is the very picture of a self-satisfied hero. “You’ve hardly any need for my help, dear lord,” he demurs. “What threat could a war be now, with Rohan’s stones in a vice and Gondor under your heel?”

Bilbo’s words please the Necromancer, Thorin can tell; but Thorin has been flattered before, and he knows well the stiffening of spine and uptilt of chin that once undercut his pride when diplomats and nobles would praise him for his defeat of Smaug. There is weakness here. The thought of it is disorienting.

“War is so inconvenient,” the Necromancer replies with deceptive lightness. “The dwarf captive you brought me from Rohan’s camps, such a fountain of information! A pity he was so… broken before I discovered him.” Dark threat enters his voice, a tendril of danger.

“Only to make him more pliant,” offers Bilbo. “Dwarves are an awfully stubborn lot, you know.” His tone, like a neighbor offering advice about potato bugs, is so incongruous that Thorin nearly forgets the sharp canny determination under his words.

“Oh, very,” agrees the Necromancer, half-smiling; Bilbo mimics this expression helplessly, though his face is tight with some darker emotion. “I had thought you meant to stir up trouble, my little hobbit, sneaking out to steal the deposed king of Erebor when I had so clearly stated my plans for his unbroken kin. And yet… I find this dwarf-king remarkably useful, and well minded to compromise when I command it.”

The Witch-king’s voice rises in cold satisfaction. “Torture is good for certain things,” he suggests. “Like teaching a proud little king to bow his head, for instance.”

The Necromancer turns on him. “I know more than one king whose head will bow,” he says, and fire comes through the calm of his voice, “if I am denied any more valuable tools because of your… appetites.”

The Witch-king lowers his eyes and half-turns, like a proud maiden scorned; Bilbo wrings his hands and looks abashed. Thorin wants to laugh. Is it not torture that made him so grateful for the end of that torture? Has he not bowed to the most dreadful god of Arda to protect his lover from those same cruel clever hands?

But the Necromancer relents, and the fire cools. “I do not chastise either of you,” he says. “You have served me well in many things, while my will and power are… diverted, and I can ill afford distraction. You,” he inclines his head to the Witch-king, “are my hand upon Gondor, my outstretched sword on the neck of my enemies; and you, Bilbo, have surprised me again and again with your gifts.”

Bilbo sighs deeply, and Thorin sees regret and adoration on his face, and understands that where the Witch-king serves and Thorin fears, Bilbo _loves_.

The Necromancer sees as well, and his face is troubled. “For this reason I must not expend you foolishly,” he murmurs. “When I sent you as a thief to the Mountain with a ring on your finger, I meant you to bring me only another of its kind; I did not think you might be able to use it yourself, nor to bind a dragon to its wheedling will. In these delicate days, your Smaug has been such a gift, such a treasure—I thought before him that I must surely free… other things, darker things, and risk my own destruction if ever I sorely needed defense.”

He reaches out, and with his great dark hand he tilts Bilbo’s jaw up to let their eyes meet. Bilbo’s lips part, and tears well in his eyes; his love is no secret, hopeless though it may be. Sauron sighs. “Tell me true, halfling: would he follow you, if you had no chain upon his heart?”

Bilbo licks his lips, and his hands curl over his breast, a useless gesture of guarding. “The ring binds him,” he begins, and the Necromancer shakes his head and leans closer.

“I know what binds the hearts of men,” he whispers, though his voice still resonates like thunder. “A ring is only a tool, and yours only an anchor of greed; what powers it keeps are keys, but the open door is meant to be entered. I ask you again: would he follow you?”

Bilbo’s mouth moves, the faintest bite of lip, the shape of a word: “If…?”

The Necromancer’s lips thin. “Would he flee, if he could? Does he love you as you love me?”

Thorin sees how Bilbo’s hands clench and how his fingers twist one another, how the shape of his spine is bowed. He recognizes heartbreak. He recalls harsh words on his own lips once, long ago, and the way Bilbo’s shoulders sank and his face turned hollow, and he averts his gaze as Bilbo replies in his too-bright voice: “I would not flee you, my lord.”

He does not speak of Smaug, but perhaps they have not been speaking of Smaug at all. The Necromancer releases Bilbo, and raises himself to his full height, turning his attention back to Thorin.

“I will favor you,” he says, raising his hand again. Thorin sees a flash of gold upon his finger—is this the ring he speaks of, or another? No—Bilbo said the Necromancer had given _him_ a ring. Thorin’s mind races. “Yes,” the Necromancer continues, “all the things you crave, kingdom and wealth and the flesh of your slaves—all these things will be yours, when my favor comes upon you.”

From the corner of his eye, Thorin sees Bilbo move, a flicker of gray light on silent feet as he prepares to leave the room, escorted by the orcs he commands. Bilbo, that merry creature? Captain of armies of filth, unwitting hero of Erebor whose dragon-conquering glory Thorin has stolen? Cold dread steals into Thorin’s gut. If Sauron means to strip Bilbo of his privilege on Thorin’s account, would it not be wise of Bilbo to simply… do away with his rival before Sauron can bestow the tokens of his love elsewhere?

“My lord,” says Thorin carefully. “I will serve you for no more favor than your gift of the elf to me. I need no kingdom nor wealth.” He sees Bilbo pause, and hopes…

The Necromancer lowers his hand. “They are the same, my favor and my gifts,” he says. “I have many mere thralls; I seek one who will bear the burden of my ring, to hear my voice when I am far away and to do my will in distant lands. You will have no slaves if you are not willing to rule.”

Thorin hesitates, caught between Bilbo’s eyes like daggers and the pressure of the Necromancer’s will. The hesitation stretches, and the Necromancer motions with one hand and calls out: “Bring us the elf.”

Bilbo and his orcs depart obediently, and Thorin kneels with all haste. “I will take on whatever burden you ask of me,” he offers in desperation. “I will carry your armies on my back, one beast at a time, to the very slopes of Erebor if you will give him to me.”

“I wonder where your loyalties lie,” remarks the Necromancer, but Thorin knows how easily he can be mastered for Thranduil’s sake, and stays kneeling, waiting for some sign.

Orcs gather in the hall; their gabbling increases in pitch as if they are fighting over a scrap of choice meat. The Necromancer seats himself in his throne and extends his foot, which is booted in heavy steel and leather. “Show me your loyalty,” he says, and Thorin crawls to the foot of his throne and presses his lips gratefully against the cold and rough of it, prostrating himself as he does so.

He hears the orcs enter and he knows they must have Thranduil with them, but he does not dare turn his head, pressing his forehead instead to his new master’s foot before kissing the steel and leather again.

“Enough,” says the Necromancer, but his voice is amused. “Rise, and see your slave.”

Thranduil is not bound and wrapped this time. As Thorin stands, he sees that the Elvenking is clothed—hardly in robes of state, but no longer wrapped in rags—and that two of the orcs clutch his forearms, snarling with sharp fangs at any others who come close.

He has found protectors again, Thorin realizes, and although his heart is wrenched by the sight he reminds himself that Thranduil’s survival is all he hopes for, even if it means that orcs are his subjects and Sauron owns both their souls.

They are broad-chested orcs too, thick and sinewed, and Thorin unconsciously shifts his own shoulders and feels the weight of his muscle, entertaining for a moment the question of whether he could wrestle the two of them and take their prisoner for his own.

Thranduil, for his part, does no such foolish thing as throwing himself forward to run for Thorin’s side, but neither does he play the blushing prize. His eyes meet Thorin’s, steady and unreadable.

The Necromancer’s voice is low and distant. “I saw his father once,” he reminisces. “A mighty creature, with fire in his eyes and bared teeth, glimpsed from far away.”

Thorin has never seen any word pierce Thranduil so cleanly. Before Thorin’s eyes, grief crushes his lover, his face robbed of its calculated coldness, twisted into a nearly human expression of sorrow. Sauron continues as if he has not noticed, though Thorin is certain he delights in the ease of his victory. “Doomed, though, and with no great doom. Greater elves and men have risen to defy me, and been more beautiful in the slaughter; and this child is no Oropher. I cannot imagine what you see in him, accustomed to jewels as you are.”

Thranduil makes as if to take a step forward, but staggers, and his orc captors jostle him back to steadiness; but before they can regain full balance, Thorin is on them, fists smiting flesh and fingers tearing skin. A moment later the Necromancer’s voice strikes them all like a bell rung too close, like a great upset in the bones of the earth: “ _Hold,_ ” he says, and all aggression stops cold.

Blood drips to the floor from Thorin’s brow; one orc growls with pain as he snaps broken fingers back into place. Thranduil pulls himself up tall. “A lowly strike,” he remarks, the cutting tone returning to his voice, “to mock a prisoner with no weapons, and to throw his losses in his face. Do you miss what _you_ have lost, when Beleriand was ruined?”

Thorin has only the vaguest knowledge of that ancient history; rampaging archangels, a mighty ocean, the flooding of long-storied halls and the wisdom of ancestors drowned and crushed and vanished. He does not know Thranduil’s true age, nor what secrets were told him in his cradle; but whatever dart has been flung strikes deep, and freezing menace descends over the room.

“You tread a deadly trail, bastard of Doriath,” says Sauron, and some strange melody seeps into his voice that turns Thorin’s marrow to water.

“I do not apologize,” retorts Thranduil, though Thorin can see his hands trembling. “You have beaten and bested me and now you offer me as a slave; degrade me all you like, but you are bereaved and no victory will restore your departed glory, though you conquer the whole of Middle-Earth and all other lands in turn.”

The silence pounds like a heartbeat. Thorin can taste death in the air, coating his tongue in dust.

Then Sauron sits back and laughs, and the sound is cruel but genuine. “I shall degrade you indeed,” he says. “And you will comply, or else you will be torn apart by orcs and devoured this very hour.”

Thorin sees how Thranduil wants to spit, how his face is sick of stillness and his body tenses for the fatal fight. _Please_ , he says silently, imploring Thranduil with his gaze, _please don’t make me watch this_.

“Come here,” orders Sauron, and simultaneously motions for the Witch-king to step closer. Thranduil obeys, his jaw clenched. “Now,” says Sauron through his teeth, “kneel, and let my servant use you as he sees fit.”

Unholy delight twists the Witch-king’s face as Thranduil looks at Thorin (who feels the whites of his eyes exposed, who feels his mouth dry and half-open and pleading) and drops to his knees, keeping his back regally straight.

The Witch-king takes Thranduil by the hair without preamble and twists until he is looking directly into Thranduil’s eyes. Whatever he sees there pleases him; he leans down and presses his mouth to Thranduil’s cheek, then to his throat, and then he bites.

Thranduil bears it, but his eyes lock onto Thorin’s as the Witch-king retreats, still grasping him by the hair. He holds that contact until the Witch-king’s wrenching hold breaks it, pressing Thranduil’s face to his robed groin with obscene care.

Thorin has never seen such crude methods from his torturer, not with the tools and clever tricks at his disposal, and he is confused—still standing, fists clenched, hoping for this to be over quickly—until he sees the Witch-king pull a long knife from his belt and hold its still-humming length next to Thranduil’s ear.

“You won’t move an inch, will you,” he cajoles. “You’ll do just what I say, and when you fail I’ll cut you—a little at a time, mind you, but this is no ordinary blade, is it? You’ve seen its like before.”

Thranduil holds perfectly still as the Witch-king winds his long hair around his hand, spooling it tight. “It wants to break your skin,” murmurs the Witch-king in a comforting tone. “Where it pierces you, rot will spread. You might survive, if the cuts are shallow; but you will be scarred. Do not imagine that your elven flesh will easily heal. This knife is made to kill the immortal. Now, move your mouth.”

Thranduil’s face is mostly obscured by the Witch-king’s robes, but Thorin can see his jaw flex, and the Witch-king laughs, joined by the Necromancer’s pleased hum. “Well enough,” says the Witch-king, shifting the knife. “Go ahead and feel what lies beneath; find out the shape of me. Soon you’ll take it meekly enough.”

Thorin’s nostrils flare and his breath seems to come in volcanic surges. He feels the Necromancer look at him, and knows that if Thranduil dies he will throw himself against the wickedness before him and be butchered and not care, and he knows that the Necromancer can tell this.

On the dais, the Witch-king is forcing Thranduil to use his hands, though from what Thorin can see he is only half-hard; but as Thranduil falters for a moment, the Witch-king releases his hold on Thranduil’s hair, seizes up a lock of it, and severs it several inches up from the end.

It is no great marring of Thranduil’s beauty, but Thranduil cries out, and Thorin winces, suspecting that injury and insult are paired in this assault.

“Now open my robes,” hisses the Witch-king, and with shaking hands Thranduil begins to comply, but his fingers are unsteady and Thorin sees the slowness of his movements and his whole body ignites as the Witch-king takes all of Thranduil’s hair in his fist again and raises the knife, prepares to cut—

He launches himself, knowing he goes to his death, but as Thorin charges he feels the weight of the Necromancer’s eye upon him and the awful intoxicating weight of favorable regard. Strength unfurls in his muscles; rage turns to force in his breast; some strange power or force or bending of will is kindled in him.

It is, of course, the Necromancer. He can feel that much. He does not care, not when the fear of the Witch-king breaks across him like brittle reeds over stone; not when the might of his charge takes the Witch-king entirely by surprise and sends his foul knife spiraling away to clatter into a corner; not when he smashes his forehead into the Witch-king’s mouth like a brawler in a pub and feels the skin split and hears the click of teeth striking teeth and the Witch-king’s tall lithe body is thrown from the dais to the floor, and Thranduil falls back on his heels, breathing hard but safe.

“My lord,” says the Witch-king reproachfully, wiping blood from his mouth; it is not black as orcs’ blood, but neither is it red, rather smearing as very dull crimson and drying almost instantly to russet. “Have I displeased you?”

Sauron smiles, inscrutable. “Your pain does not give me joy,” he says. “And yet… I have more than one revenge to take, and more than one prize to offer. I thank you for letting me demonstrate this.”

Thorin can scarcely hear them. Overwhelmed with the rush of power, he seizes Thranduil just as the Witch-king held him, by the length of his hair; he has no knife, and he is no tall Man, but he does not need to bend far to crush his mouth to Thranduil’s.

No loving kiss, this. The power flows through him like molten stone through a deep vein in the earth, the pressure intolerable, the wrath and lust unstoppable. It is not for several more moments that the red rage diminishes for a moment, and Thorin sees himself as if from outside his body: thick and brawny, the dark coarse hair of his beard and forearms scratching red patterns into Thranduil’s skin, bent on ravishment when a moment before he only hoped for… he hoped for…

It is so hard to come back to himself, to release that power, that Thorin can only think to shove Thranduil away. The Elvenking nearly falls down the steps, gathering himself up just enough to kick his fallen form across the floor toward the corner, hiding himself partially in the shadows.

Thorin’s breath comes short. He is not merely to be given Thranduil, he understands. He is to be given the means to _take_ Thranduil. And with that… the urge to own, the hunger for pain, the twisted jealousy and greed that Sauron sends him, even for just a moment.

He cannot imagine what it will be like when he has a ring. He shudders and reminds himself that he does not want one, that he does not want to control and force and _own_ Thranduil, and he opens his mouth to say so—

Thranduil’s weight shifts for a moment. It is subtle, and Sauron’s eye is still on the fallen Witch-king, who is slowly regaining his feet and breathing hard under the weight of Sauron’s will, struggling to hold tight to his feelings of betrayal while Sauron bends himself to the task of stripping those feelings away.

In the corner, still sprawled, Thranduil wraps his hand around the hilt of the Witch-king’s blade, and his eyes meet Thorin’s as he slides it cautiously into the neck of his tunic, concealing it against his body.

He will have them both killed. The orcs will find it, and take it; they will be tortured and butchered, and nobody will know except the Necromancer and the orcs that eat them.

And yet… Thorin cannot pretend that he will be able to protect Thranduil forever, or even for much longer. Not without breaking him; not without being devoured by greed and driven insane with jealousy. Thranduil must have some defense, Thorin realizes. Even against him.

So he holds his tongue while the Witch-king is brought back to submission, and when the Necromancer’s attention strays again he speaks up clearly:

“I will take your ring, and gladly.”

The Necromancer nods. “Of course. Let the moon finish turning, and I will free its current bearer when his tasks are complete and give my blessing to you, with all its accompanying burden.”

Thorin nods, refusing to let himself think, letting the pact he enters now be a distant thing some other dwarf will deal with. There is no time; he only hopes for one thing. “Then give me the elf, as token of your promise.”

“Tiresome,” says the Necromancer with a grimace. “You _do_ harp on that one thing. Very well, have your prize, and try not to murder him before your vow is sealed to my will.”

Thorin can find no voice to speak. He stomps down from the dais, holding his tongue; and seizing Thranduil by the arm, he pulls him upright, only scarcely feeling the weight-shift of the blade beneath his tunic.

“Have him taken to more accommodating chambers,” the Necromancer says, and turns away from Thorin to murmur to his subdued servant, whose expression is already turning from suppressed wrath to wronged supplication.

Thorin holds onto his lover, his prize, as the orcs usher them down the hall and the stairs. When one stretches out a hand to grab at Thranduil’s wrist, Thorin snarls at him, and the offending reach is retracted. Soon they arrive in another part of the tower, a room of state with oppressively high ceilings and a guttering fire on the hearth, which opens into a bathing-chamber and a bedroom on either side.

“Go,” says Thorin, releasing Thranduil as the orcs make their departure. “Clean yourself, and… hide your shame.” He makes a pointed face at the front of Thranduil’s tunic, not trusting the ears of Dol Goldur to allow them their secrets, and Thranduil looks at him for a moment—testing him, waiting for exposure or disarming—and places his palm along Thorin’s face, and without speaking he goes.

Thorin watches him disappear into the bathing-room and finds himself struggling to contain some enormous lump of tension that closes his throat and burns in his chest. He will not allow himself to weep, and he does not trust himself to follow Thranduil so soon after assaulting him; so instead he goes to the bedroom, where a tall bed looms over a grimly-lit space, and where Bilbo sits perched on a chair, waiting for him with his pointed teeth bared in what is almost a smile.

 


	16. Chapter 16

“You are a madman,” says Bilbo, shaking his head in mock pity, “if you think you can keep him, once the ring is on you.” He shifts comfortably in the chair, as if he owns it.

Thorin’s hand twitches for a sword. “I do not want your ring,” he spits. “Your _precious_ master seems bent on giving it to me, though. Are you here to murder me, and keep his favor?”

Bilbo’s lips pinch in a pained smile. “If I murdered you,” he chides, “I suspect I would lose his favor entirely. At any rate, I’ve only come to warn you. I’ve seen how you look at your elf.”

“And how do I look at him?” Thorin wants a bath badly; his skin is still streaked with his own blood and with the filth of the dungeons, and the tunic he has slept in for weeks is stiff with sweat. Across the room from Bilbo is a wardrobe, through whose open door he can see clean linen hanging; but Thranduil is in the bath now, and Thorin still shivers when he thinks of that kiss.

With a wry chuckle, Bilbo kicks his legs from beneath the chair and flexes his toes, an expression of anticipation spreading across his face. “I used to wish you’d look at me that way,” he says, “but now I can’t say I’d like to be in his place. You’ll kill him, you know, soon as the ring is on you.”

“You keep saying that,” growls Thorin, spotting a wash-basin across the room and heading for it with relief. The water is cold, but there are flakes of real soap on the shelf. “I’ve kept him for a year, Baggins, and done such things to him—” with this he strips off his tunic, not caring if Bilbo puts a dagger in his back, and hurls the filthy mass into the fireplace— “He trusts me, I think, or he would have died long before this.”

“Oh, trust has nothing to do with it,” dismisses Bilbo. “We’ve known for ages, my lord and his servants, that some elves die quicker than others under violation. Why, more than a few perished of shock before they were quite naked! How furious the Witch-king was, to have his toys escape him….” He shakes his head, still swinging his legs from the edge of his chair, and watches with polite disinterest as Thorin scrubs his hands and face. “Although I hear you pushed him _quite_ far for our lord’s entertainment. Perhaps you do have a talent for these things.”

“He trusts me,” says Thorin, tersely, splashing his face with the icy water and wringing his beard.

“Trust,” laughs Bilbo. “How you do go on. That one isn’t alive because he _trusts_ , you dear fool. He finds protectors, and he uses them against each other. Haven’t you seen how my lads jostle for him?”

Red rage chokes Thorin’s voice for a moment, and he feels his mouth tense and purse in a closed snarl as he stands and turns. Cold water drips down his breast, cutting lines through dirt and blood as it courses through thick hair and wells up at the waist of his trousers; he pays it no mind, facing Bilbo with his fists clenched and his nostrils flared.

“You should leave, if you’ve said your fill,” he growls, when he has control of himself again. Bilbo is watching him without a trace of humor now, his eyes betraying rabbit-fear and spite, and after a moment he stands and brushes off his sleeves.

“You’ll be _so_ careful,” Bilbo says in his lilting voice as Thorin turns back to his ablutions. “You’ll keep him by your side, won’t you? You’ll slaughter anything that touches him, anyone whose eye lingers too long? He’ll be your slave, but a _living_ slave, so that’s all right, then.” Thorin feels him approach, and does not turn; he does not trust himself to hold his wrath in check, and he does not think himself so valuable to the Necromancer that he will be forgiven Bilbo’s death. Instead he scrubs his neck, feeling the skin redden from the friction and the water rolling down his back.

Bilbo’s voice is a hiss. “You’ll have him less than a day, once the ring is on you,” and Thorin feels fingertips, light and cautious, following the droplet-trails up the lower length of his spine. He shivers, and not from the cold of the water or the hunger for violence. “It works on your greed, and you were ever greedy, Thorin Oakenshield. You left me in the forest, when I was taken, and you pressed on to Erebor while our lord rose to power and the world collapsed around your ears. You wanted, and you took.”

“It wasn’t like that,” protests Thorin, though old guilt creeps in like a wound re-opening. “Spiders came from the trees and orcs from the gullies and dens, and darker things howled around us. We ran, and we dared not turn back, not even for our fallen kin.”

“Oh, that’s all very well then,” mocks Bilbo, his fingertips still tracing the muscle along Thorin’s spine, where privation has stripped away the smoothness of his skin. “A good thing I fell into such lucky company afterward, wouldn’t you say?”

Thorin sidesteps, avoiding that uncomfortable touch, and Bilbo gives him a delighted laugh, as if he has just done a trick. “ _So_ squeamish. I’ll spare you the chaffing, then, shall I? You’ll never scrub the guilt off your skin, the scars neither; and don’t flatter yourself, you’ll find greed a-plenty for our lord’s purposes once you feel that ring on your skin. You want him; you’ll take him, and you’ll ruin him sure as sunrise. There’s no controlling your lusts with this awful thing—” and Bilbo holds up his hand, displaying the heavy wroughten ring with self-effacing apology. “The only thing that conquers greed, I find, is greater greed. What you want most, you’ll have, or go mad running after it.”

The ring seems to pulse in Thorin’s vision. It looks awful on Bilbo’s finger; it looks wonderful. Thorin reaches out a hand for it without even thinking.

Shaking his head, Bilbo steps backward a pace, holding his hand behind his back. “I’ll warn you,” he says, his voice taking a sharp edge, “I will not give it to you until my lord takes it from me. I killed the last creature that tried to take a ring from me.”

“My father,” Thorin breathes, remembering the words of Gandalf so long ago, Thror wandering mad in the halls of the Necromancer.

Bilbo laughs. “Oh dear me no, not _this_ ring. Your father gave it up willingly enough, once my master asked for it. Your grandfather had one too, and I tried to burgle it, but even with this one to guide my way—“ he wags his finger again— “I never could spot the thing. Fortunately I stole your dragon by accident, or I suspect I’d be in the same shallow grave as your father. No, I mean _my_ ring—” But here he stops himself, and bites his lip until the points of his teeth raise spots of blood.

“Will Smaug obey me instead, if I take the ring?” Thorin does not trust him for an answer, of course, but Bilbo merely shrugs.

“I doubt it,” he muses, leaning against the edge of the bed. “Dragons are lured by greed as much by gold, I suppose, and I learned greed from my prize in short order, didn’t I? But my lovely friend Smaug and I have had such long and intimate conversation since then, and become quite close; I do not think he will be seduced from my side by such a tawdry thing as a taste for gold hair.”

In the foyer, there is movement, and Thorin lets his gaze flicker toward the door for a moment; but Thranduil does not enter, and Thorin is grateful. “And what do you want, that your greed is so alluring to the dragon,” he whispers, although he is certain Thranduil can still hear.

“I want _him_ ,” snarls Bilbo in return, and Thorin sees in his face some wicked creature’s expression, some shriveled pitiful monster with a death-grip waiting in its claws; but then it passes, and Bilbo is only not quite right again, only faintly off from the curly head bobbing at the round green door.

Thorin advances on Bilbo, still dripping. “Then why have you not murdered me yet?”

Bilbo turns his face away, breaking eye contact. “I can’t have him,” he says, bitter and thick-voiced and petulant. “I want him the way you want that elf, I want to own him and keep him and… and have him love me. And if I can’t have him…”

His voice trails off, and Thorin stares at him with wide, horrified eyes. At last he finds words for his shock: “I would not wish ill to Thranduil, even if he turned his back on me.” It is the only safe thing he can say; to imply support for any hint of sedition might be fatal. “I would… I would fight for him, I would kill for him, but by my beard I would not raise my hand to him in anger.”

“I fought for him,” says Bilbo, his voice defensive and cutting, pointing his finger to stab it at Thorin’s chest. “I stole a dragon for him! I served him well, even when I could have flown across the world! If not for me, he would have been even weaker, he would have had to spend half his power opening Durin’s Door and leashing the… the thing that lives beyond it—”

Bilbo says no name, and Thorin does not know what thing he refuses to describe, but a cold nauseous chill wells up in his bones.

“He is not at his full strength yet,” confides Bilbo, regaining control of himself. “He once commanded hundreds of them, of the things, but now even one is a threat to him, I suppose. Now that it’s had a taste of freedom, it’s worse than orcs for troublemaking. No matter; he has Smaug, and he has me, and we will—protect him—”

“And if he will not be yours to protect?”

Bilbo smiles distantly, sorrowfully. “Then we will protect him even more thoroughly,” he murmurs. “But it’s no matter, really. I knew long ago that he couldn’t love me; his heart is given to another.”

He leans close, standing on tiptoe, and his defiled mouth is still too low to reach Thorin’s ear; so Thorin stoops, curious despite himself.

“I wanted a war,” he whispers. “I wanted a distraction, to make him expend his power, to make him vulnerable to my… my protection. I sent my horse-lover spy to catch your nephew, and had what was left of him sent home, in hopes that you’d rise to the bait. But it seems you’ve failed in that regard.” His breath is familiar, deceptively pleasant; this close, he is reduced to the curl of brown hair and the delicate point of ear, and he might have been the Baggins of long ago. “I need another distraction,” continues Bilbo, urgently, “and you need a way to keep Thranduil alive when you are enslaved. You can’t protect him from yourself, my friend; you can only sacrifice yourself for him now.”

“What are you saying,” asks Thorin, hoarse and low, his hair falling forward from his shoulders as he hunches to hear Bilbo’s words.

“When he takes the ring from me,” whispers Bilbo, “you will have only a few moments of freedom; but he will bend close to you, and then you must strike.”

Thorin snorts. “And what will you do while he laughs at me? While the Witch-king flays me? What will become of Thranduil, if the coin of his life is no longer useful?”

The smile in Bilbo’s voice is audible. “When you strike, I also shall strike,” he murmurs. “And my blow will be the one that fells him.”

“I thought you meant to protect him?”

“He will not die so easily,” says Bilbo. “My goodness, I hardly want to _kill_ him. I want to keep him safe, and he is so reckless on his own.”

Thorin straightens to his full height. “Bilbo Baggins,” he says, “you are a mad, vicious, broken little creature, and you will bring yourself to ruin soon enough. I want no part of this.”

“I’ll keep Thranduil safe for you,” wheedles Bilbo, backing toward the door. “If anything bad should happen to you, that is.”

As if Thorin could raise a hand in wrath to that malevolent angel and have anything _good_ happen to him. “You’re mad,” he repeats, shaking his head. “He’s mine; he will always be mine.”

Bilbo shrugs, voice clear and light as he replies: “Well, keep up your hopes, then. Who knows? Anything could happen. You might not rape your pretty toy to death after all, or maybe it won’t be such a bad fate for him once you’ve fallen entirely under my lord’s sway. Maybe you’ll escape.” His eyes twinkle as he turns to leave, and he shoots over his shoulder: “Maybe Erebor will come for you.”

Then he is gone, and Thorin sags against the wash-basin stand, sick at heart and suddenly exhausted.

The chamber-door closes beyond, and silence falls; then Thranduil is standing in the doorway, tall and quiet with heavy eyes, wrapped in a voluminous white sheet, and he says: “Come and wash yourself properly, my lord.”

Something in his tone is a warning, and Thorin averts his gaze as he brushes past and stomps to the bathing-room, where hot water bubbles up from thick ceramic pipes, streaks the dark stone with sickly orange and a faint sulphuric fume, and fills the black iron tub to overflowing. Water sloshes across the floor and drains through a plain grate, leaving its rusty traces across the flagstones and glistening as it trickles. The room is lit by flickering torches high on the walls, and the effect is both austere and darkly welcoming, inviting him to sink into the dark comfort of that milky, metallic water and be stained and comforted at once.

He strips, willing himself to forget the horror of the moment and the fair, possibly doomed elvenking in his bedchamber; and, climbing into the hot water, he sinks against the warm black iron like a wounded soldier, groaning his relief.

Time passes; he floats out of his own mind and dreams, uneasy memories of simpler times, and only wakes when a cool hand rests against his shoulder. Thranduil leans over him, in his hand a decanter of wine. Beside him, on a low table, there rests a platter of food, meat and bread of less foul aspect than Thorin has expected, and a single pear.

He starts up, but Thranduil places a gentle hand on his shoulder and breaks the bread for him, lifting the morsel to his lips without a word. It is strange, being fed like an invalid, but Thorin finds that his exhaustion is still heavy and the luxury of eating without effort is a pleasure that he has not imagined possible before now.

Thranduil’s fingertips press against his lip as he accepts each bite, and Thorin feels at once uncomfortable—it seems years, a lifetime, since he was alone with Thranduil—and familiar, safe, heartbroken. It feels like a whisper of a life they might have had, once. Thranduil’s hair swings across his shoulders as he reaches from platter to tub, and Thorin sees the shorn ends of his ear-lock slide and fall before the rest, reminding him of the Witch-king’s shadow over them.

Reminding him that Thranduil fears some things more than death.

As he stares, Thranduil says, in measured tones: “You should do as Bilbo asks.” His hands do not falter as he breaks another mouthful of bread and picks up the runnings of the meat before conveying it to Thorin’s mouth; but his eyes are downcast.

“Absolutely not,” declares Thorin. “If I strike him and he kills me, you will be dead in a moment; and if he does not, he will kill you slowly before my eyes. No.” He accepts the bread, tasting nothing but ash.

While he struggles to swallow it, Thranduil presses on, still not meeting his eyes. “I did not spy. He must have known I could hear; his master certainly knows the strengths and weaknesses of my kind. He knew I would urge you to help him.”

Thorin stares at him incredulously, then reaches for the wine with one dripping arm. “He is a mad, conniving creature who will sacrifice us for his delusions. You cannot imagine otherwise.”

“Once Sauron has what he wants, he will find something else to whet your greed,” Thranduil says, ripping bird-meat from bone on the platter. “Something easily controlled, something that will compel you to build armies and cities, rather than distracting you from it.”

A cutting response wells up in Thorin’s throat, but Thranduil offers him a bite of the bird instead, and Thorin settles for sinking his teeth into meat. Thranduil has a point: if one means to enslave by hunger, one does not give bread. Still…

“What jewel, what kingdom, could he possibly offer me, that I would not gladly give up or rule for your sake?” Thorin reaches for the platter himself, and Thranduil sits back on his heels, relinquishing the role of caregiver as Thorin gains strength. “What have I _not_ given up for your sake? Will you give up your life so cheaply, when I am so close to winning your safety?”

Thranduil’s eyes meet his with stunning ferocity. “It is mine to give.”

“To throw away, you mean,” growls Thorin, hurling the stripped bone across the room to land, gnawed and cracked, in the rusted pool beneath an iron pipe. “Do you want my protection or not? Do you want to escape, even if it means giving up hope?”

At this Thranduil rises to his feet, the sheet shifting dangerously around him, and the clinging ice retreats from his gaze, leaving a fire Thorin has never seen. “I do not need your protection any longer,” he says. “I do not seek escape, but the righting of old wrongs. I am a _king_ , Thorin, for all that I am lain low.”

Thorin laughs, short and dry and low. “Where was this defiance when you knelt at my feet, and bowed your head to hide how you looked for another protector? Or did you not mean to escape, when you goaded me to violate you and end your suffering by violence?”

The words taste like acid, and Thorin spits them as though they burn his tongue. Thranduil’s lips part, unspeaking, and his brow tenses into a question of hurt. Thorin aches at the sight, and he feels his own mouth form the shapes of apology; he wants to throw himself at Thranduil’s feet and beg his forgiveness.

But Thranduil speaks before he can, shaking intensity in his voice. “I debased myself,” he hisses. “I bowed and submitted, and I _survived_ , Thorin. I survived because I knew I must, because there was evil in the world to fight. I survived for _this_.”

“To suffer a futile death, and see me slain as well?”

“To die in battle against that evil,” Thranduil snarls, “as befits a king.”

Thorin feels his face darkening, reddening, and not from the heat of the water. “As befits a king,” he retorts, “who lets his allies die unaided? Who turns his back in cowardice when _evil_ is burning and tearing their bodies before him? Who offers no comfort to their widows and orphans, and sends no rescue when they are hunted by foul beasts within his own borders?”

“You were no guest of mine,” shouts Thranduil, and then bites his lip and breathes deep, relenting. Thorin watches as the fire goes out of his eyes and his posture loses its aggression. “Still,” Thranduil says, “I regret my inaction. I can tell you that I did not wish to see my men slaughtered, nor to waste precious resources on a kingdom dying of a mortal wound—but this means little to one who has suffered so much. What I could not use, I abandoned; and when I found myself suffering and abandoned in turn, I used _you_.”

It is not quite an apology; but it puts words to a festering anger in Thorin’s heart, and it turns his wrath to shame, that Thranduil should apologize for grasping at whatever source of help he could.

Before he can speak, Thranduil adds: “I do not promise change, Thorin. It is what I am: throneless, crownless, but a king. I am certain you understand.” Here he smiles, a hollow wistful thing. “You must see that we are going to our deaths; should we not die as kings, and give up our lives with meaning?”

“To pander to Bilbo’s madness,” says Thorin bitterly. “To give the Witch-king a bit of entertainment? That monster is not mere flesh, Thranduil! Shall I trust Bilbo to place a killing blow?”

“We are not entirely helpless,” says Thranduil, and his eyes dart to the drain, where Thorin follows his gaze and catches a glint of metal beneath the grate. His mouth dries up, and they lock eyes for a moment. “I cannot conceal it, or I would strike the blow myself. Please, Thorin.”

The idea of it tastes like hope for a moment, hope of victory and freedom. Thorin cannot keep his eyes from the grate, from the blade beneath, and he pictures its wicked blade sinking into the Necromancer’s breast.

Then he pictures it as it must have lain beneath Thranduil’s tunic as he carried it, the venomous edge warming against vulnerable skin, and he remembers that one or both of them will surely die if Thranduil’s plan comes to pass. “No,” he says roughly, and when Thranduil comes forward to kneel by the tub and stretch out his hand to Thorin’s face, he bats it away. “No,” he repeats, “I am promised your life for my reward if I take the ring, am I not? Should I give you up for the good of a world that cares nothing for either of us? Should I let you die so my bloodthirsty puppet of a nephew can sleep more soundly in his halls?”

Thorin is half out of the bath now, rising from the water with wrath in his blood; his voice is pouring from him like the breath of a furnace, ringing from the tiles. Thranduil reaches out a hand to calm him, to press him back, and as his palm pushes against Thorin’s shoulder Thorin grasps him by the wrist and pulls him back, slipping as he goes and taking Thranduil with him, until they are both falling and Thorin splashes heavily back into the water and Thranduil lands atop him, slithering in his floating sheet and supple under Thorin’s hungry hands and gasping as the water streams down his face.

“I would burn the whole fucking world,” whispers Thorin, “to keep you alive.”

Thranduil stares at him, breathless, his long hair streaming about his face and his mouth open in protest or disbelief; so Thorin kisses him, and Thranduil makes a sorrowful sound and kisses him back.

His mouth is sweeter than Thorin remembers, more responsive than it was when Thorin moved by the Necromancer’s will. Thorin feels Thranduil’s fingers curling into the sodden waves of his hair, and takes his lower lip into his mouth, pulling until Thranduil’s teeth part and his tongue unfurls against Thorin’s upper lip and he groans into Thorin’s mouth in surrender.

Thranduil’s body is so long that his knees nearly meet the foot of the tub, and Thorin can see his feet rising from the water, knees folded and heels drawn up in a mockery of indolence like a youth on his belly in the grass, toes spread and then curling. The weight of him is delicious in the hot water; the wet sheet is rough, the shape of moving muscle beyond it tantalizing. Thorin cannot quite reach him through the tangled cloth, but the delight of his mouth is such a distraction that Thorin’s hands are satisfied for a moment with the strength of Thranduil’s back.

Not for more than a moment though. Thranduil is alive against him, moving with steady urgency that makes the water lap against the sides of the tub and pours soapsuds onto the floor. Thorin rolls his hips against Thranduil’s belly, digs his fingers into shoulders and back, kisses lips and face and—shifting to pull Thranduil further up, and to ruck the edge of the sheet up and expose Thranduil’s buttocks—his throat, until Thranduil sighs and shudders and his skin is marked with bruises.

Thranduil is hard against him, the familiar shape of his flesh pressing into Thorin’s thigh with each movement. When the sheet finally gives way, Thranduil’s cock rides against the skin and fur of Thorin’s powerful thigh with desperate intent, and Thorin moans into his throat with each thrust.

Then Thranduil shifts again, slipping against the soapy sides of the tub, and is sitting back on his haunches, displacing Thranduil’s legs to either side. He looks down at the shape of Thorin’s red and swollen cock beneath the water, and a fey light comes into his eyes, a hungry determination that Thorin fears, and he moves to straddle Thorin again.

“You must think me a fool,” says Thorin, struggling to catch his breath, “if you hope that I will risk your life for my pleasure, when I would not gamble it against the fate of the world.”

“I will not die,” says Thranduil, averting his eyes. “Not of this.”

“Perhaps you are the fool,” offers Thorin, but Thranduil leans forward again, settling his weight into Thorin’s, rocking against him and letting his wet hair fall about Thorin’s face as he kisses Thorin’s brow.

“On the mountain,” murmurs Thranduil against his temple, his words soothing but the motion of his hips a torment, “I lay with you, and climaxed, and did not die.”

“You were not forced,” Thorin grits out. The slick of soap and skin, the weight and pressure against his cock, is almost intolerable. The slide of Thranduil’s cock against his thigh is an excruciation. “You did it—of your own free will—I did not touch you—”

“This is of my own free will,” pleads Thranduil. “My choice. I will not die. Have you not opened me before now? Have I not submitted to you in every way but this?”

His lips press against Thorin’s ear, and Thorin feels his whole body shiver and the tremor of it undulate against Thranduil’s body, against his cock. The low sound of longing in his ear passes through him in liquid dissolution, swelling the fierce pounding knot of need at the base of his belly. “No elf has survived,” he insists, though his voice is losing its power, “neither forced orgasm nor—nor any penetration. I… I read the oldest texts, I heard the… the testimony of witnesses…”

He is failing. Thranduil begs in his ear, his shoulders and back working as he thrusts and presses against Thorin, filling his hearing with moans and pleas and sibilant phrases in his own tongue. “Tell me,” murmurs Thranduil, his breath growing short and his movements hurried, “in all your texts, did any elf choose to be penetrated?”

The answer is so far away, through a haze of arousal and maddening need. Thorin can scarcely find his tongue. “No,” he admits, “but then would anyone—choose—”

A crash. He thinks for a moment that Thranduil must have slipped, knocked his knee or his elbow against the iron tub, or that the platter must have fallen to the floor; but as they both freeze, Thorin makes more sense of the sound and realizes that there are other sounds, orcs gabbling, the creak of an abused door; then a flood of black flesh and worn leather bursts through the door of his chambers, and he scrambles upright as Thranduil is pulled off him, already shouting at the intruders.

Thranduil screams, a sound to freeze the heart, terror and panic and clutching hands reaching for Thorin as he is dragged backward by thick orcish arms. Blind fury descends and blots out the world; Thorin feels himself screaming, feels flesh tearing and bone crunching beneath his fists, and only comes back to his senses when the Witch-king’s cold claws sink into his shoulder, biting and freezing the skin.

Thorin is bleeding, mostly on the forearms, though a bite on his shoulder has already begun to throb. The Witch-king’s fingernails stab into his skin with razor-numb threats of pain. The orcs gather themselves, hissing and cackling at him in their foul language, smearing their black blood across the floor.

“Can’t have you fucking the life out of him yet,” soothes the Witch-king with a hum of false sympathy.

Across the room, Thranduil has gathered himself, stark naked and dripping wet but containing his emotions with great effort. His nostrils are flared and he is breathing fast; but he meets Thorin’s eyes, and flicks his gaze to the Witch-king, and Thorin sees the nature of his fear.

He does not dare look at the grate.

But perhaps the Witch-king has not yet noticed his loss, or perhaps the Necromancer’s will has blunted his memory of the moment. He does not order the room searched—he only nods to the orcs, who scrabble and crowd about Thranduil, groping and sneering, and start to push him off his feet so he can more easily be carried.

“Stop,” says Thranduil, and it is to his credit as a king that his voice can command even orcs for a moment. “I will go, and peacefully, but only my chosen protectors may touch me.”

The rest groan and spit at this, but soon only four orcs are left grasping Thranduil’s arms, supporting him by the waist, not quite letting him walk at his own pace. They escort him from Thorin’s chambers, and Thranduil only looks back once, furtively, before he is gone.

The Witch-king releases Thorin’s shoulder with a sigh. _Why is he still here_ , wonders Thorin, and his blood runs cold—were they spying after all? Does he suspect the secrets Thorin keeps?

“A good thing our friend Bilbo warned me that something like this might be happening,” the Witch-king croons, picking up the hems of his robes as he crosses the wet filth and orange stains on the floor. “You should thank him, Thorin. He has your best interests in mind, after all.” With a sardonic smirk he departs, and the door closes behind him as though it were never battered, this time with a resounding clang as a bar slides into place, imprisoning Thorin within.

With detached, mechanical movements Thorin drains the tub and dries himself, staring into the middle space as he does. He is not sure what sensations are running beneath his skin, the tingle of arousal or the thrill of the fight or something worse and darker and closer to fear.

He cannot bring himself to eat, not with the memory of Thranduil still on his lips; so he falls into his bed and lets creeping exhaustion approach, and grimaces and shakes and tells himself he does not feel the tears.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

 

The smoke over Dol Goldur is thick enough to dim the sun, and steady hammer-blows thunder in the walls of Thorin’s chambers. From the high windows, sickly gray light is Thorin’s only hint of dawn, and yet in this hellish darkness it wakes him easily each morning before he is summoned to his master’s side.

The Necromancer—Lord Sauron, for Thorin is learning to forget the old names—draws his council together each morning with the sunrise, and Thorin learns that he is not the only servant besides Bilbo and the Witch-king whose knee is bent to Sauron’s service. Orcs with intelligent faces hold discourse on the breeding-pits and the war-machines, telling of armies now thirty thousand strong and forges yielding arms like brambles bearing thorns. Other tall men stand before his king and bow, some mighty and beautiful, some little more than withered cloaks with hissing voices, all bringing reports that speak of growing power and influence in the world.

Little of this matters to Thorin. The morning council is where he sees Thranduil.

His lord asks questions of him, which Thorin knows better than to imagine are truly questions of ignorance or council-seeking. Thranduil stands across from him, surrounded by orcs and draped in gray, while Sauron applauds Thorin’s answers or scorns them, and Thorin seethes with rage as he watches orc hands stroke and grip Thranduil’s arms, orc mouths inhale close enough to stir Thranduil’s hair. Soon, he tells himself, the moon will turn, and he will trade sanity and hope for Thranduil’s safety, and tear his orcish rivals limb from limb for their presumption.

The point of all this charade is not lost on him. He sees Thranduil by his lord’s sufferance, and in his lord’s service. So he serves, and answers when he is asked, and slowly the moon waxes beyond the drowning smoke.

 

* * *

 

 

He awakens from sound sleep to the cold silver light of pre-dawn. There is a sound in his chambers, in the foyer, the lift of a latch, and in his dreamish state Thorin frowns; beyond the high windows, a hazy but open sky is turning to oily pearl. The smoke has lifted.

The sound comes again, and Thorin shakes off the last of his slumber and is on his feet in a moment, hand unconsciously searching for a weapon that is not near. He thinks of the grate in the bathing-room, and curses himself for a fool; orcs are flooding into his foyer, silent rather than cackling, their heavy footfalls muffled by his closed door.

Naked and defenseless, Thorin sets his feet apart in fighting stance and readies his fists, but no assault comes. The door of his room remains closed, and indeed a hush falls outside, a hurried stillness and the shifting of leather over impatient limbs.

Thorin girds himself as fast as he can, though his shirtsleeves and trousers will offer little protection if the orcs mean him harm. No help for it—he will not be burgled in the tiny shred of space that he can nearly call his own.

But as he opens the door, the orcs fail to react with violence. There are only a few of them, six or seven, and just as Thorin recognizes them from the council room he pushes the bathing-room door open and finds Thranduil there, the nape of his neck glistening in the weak blush of first light.

Thorin’s mouth falls open. Thranduil is not clad in the council-room prisoner’s robes that Thorin has grown accustomed to, pale in heather and charcoal and dust. Dark, coarse cloth falls from his arms, bound with leather thongs at wrists and elbows in a mockery of ornamentation. Shreds of fur cling to the pounded skins that insufficiently cover his torso, baring his belly and sides, and tails and skulls and other grisly trophies adorn him from throat to navel.

He looks like an orcish king, if orcs were noble and fair. He looks like a star fallen to earth, turning to meet Thorin’s eyes, the weight of his trophy-laden skirts dragging about his legs. He looks like one of Sauron’s honored servants, beautiful in his filth.

“What is this,” asks Thorin hoarsely, gesturing to Thranduil, and Thranduil looks down at himself as if Thorin has questioned the existence of his skin, then looks beyond Thorin’s shoulder and tilts his head. Behind Thorin, the door closes, and the breathing of orcs is muffled; they are alone.

“I wear prison gray when I attend the council,” says Thranduil, but beneath his calm voice a strange fey force is pressing. “When Sauron is not present to debase me, I am decorated by my keepers, as befits their toy.”

“You _command_ them,” says Thorin, a shivering dread creeping in his belly. “They attend you as a king.”

“They dote upon me,” retorts Thranduil. “They let me have my whims. So long as I am their plaything, they keep me safe and cosseted.”

Jealousy is a nauseous wave, rising to drown Thorin’s sense. “You wear their stinking rubbish like a bridal gown,” he says, closing on Thranduil in a few steps, ignoring the way Thranduil towers over him.

Thranduil’s eyes tighten, and his brow draws into what might be query and what might be regret, looking down at Thorin in heavy silence. At last, as Thorin refuses to meet his eyes, preferring instead to examine the discordant mess of Thranduil’s clothing, Thranduil reaches out with one hand and cradles Thorin’s face, long fingers sliding through the weight of Thorin’s beard to rest against the skin below his ear.

“I have not forsaken you,” Thranduil says. Words hang behind his voice unsaid; his eyes delve and press as he turns Thorin’s face upward and inclines his own to meet Thorin’s bitter gaze. “I come to warn you. Bilbo was summoned to the council chambers an hour ago; others are assembling. There is a great wave on the horizon. The sun is rising. Erebor has come.”

Breath and speech leave Thorin entirely. He opens his mouth, but a burning weight is rising in his breast, and before he can muster his words Thranduil’s palm is lifting his jaw and his other hand is burying itself in the unbraided waves of Thorin’s hair and Thranduil’s mouth closes over his own in aching silence.

It is no soft sensual kiss, nor is it fraught with desire and seduction. Thranduil’s lips are tight as if they mean to shape words, and his breath comes with such force that Thorin thinks he must be weeping, though no tears fall. Thorin kisses him back, sick and feverish with uncertain hope, and his hands come up to clutch at Thranduil’s hips beneath the leather and coarse cloth, to pull him closer and embrace him—

Thranduil stiffens under his hands, and he pulls back, still searching Thorin’s eyes with pained force. “If I had any choice,” he whispers, “despite all things, I would choose you.”

Thorin reaches for him again, but Thranduil steps back hurriedly and raises his voice in a harsh tongue that Thorin recognizes as the orcs’, and his keepers rush into the room and snarl at Thorin as they surround and take Thranduil and half-carry him away. They snap at each other as they do, and Thorin sees that one of them is limping, but Thorin’s palms lie flat on the taut bruise-dark skin of two of his captors and the rest snarl their spite at the lucky ones as they lead him away.

He yields to them so easily, Thorin thinks, watching them depart. He lets them, he _uses_ them. Are they so blind? Do they not see that their prey will flee the moment they lose their usefulness?

As he has fled his earlier protectors, who were also blind?

Something inside him is stretching thinner and thinner. _You cannot keep him_ , whispers the echo of Bilbo’s voice in his ear.

Thorin shifts, and feels the grate creak beneath his feet, and wonders if he is sacrificing his soul for an empty prize. Perhaps Thranduil is not meant to be his, but to survive or perish on his own, seeking his protectors where they are offered, belonging to whatever king or beast is strongest.

He will be strong, in a few moments. He knows very well why he is being summoned, if war has come to their doorstep. He will wear Bilbo’s ring by noon, if he is no fool.

And beneath his feet is a secret that could mean his death, or worse… or if Bilbo is not the insane husk he seems to be, the salvation of all Middle-Earth. The price will almost certainly be unthinkable.

If he raises the knife to his master, Thranduil will never be his—Thranduil, who wears the favor of orcs, whose eyes strayed to Kili in the darkness of those first days, who is sorrowful and submissive when he fears for his life and who is assertive and wicked when he has no need of shelter.

He kneels, dazed, eyes locked and distant, scarcely registering the slick orange stains and the jagged edges of the black metal grate as it bites into his fingers. With a heave, he dislodges the barred panel, and forces himself to look down, to see his glimmering fate.

Orange stains streak the drain-hole; slimy water trickles below. There is a scraped place on a ledge, and the lines of fingers clutching at the orange muck. There is no knife.

Thorin feels his bile rising. Orcs, masters, protectors, kisses—Thranduil means to sacrifice himself, means to die fighting where Thorin was prepared to bow the knee. “No,” chokes Thorin, “you will _not_ —”

In his distress, he does not realize for a full few seconds that he is no longer alone. The dawn light is creeping closer, brighter than Thorin has ever seen it here, and it glints on the embroidery of the Witch-king’s robe where it drapes across his foot, a mere pace behind Thorin.

“Lose something?” croons the Witch-king, and his cold hand settles on Thorin’s shoulder. “Never you mind, little king, greater things are afoot. You are summoned to my lord’s side, and hurry.”

 

* * *

 

 

In the throne room, the servants of Sauron are assembled, shifting and eyeing one another in silence. Beside his throne, Sauron stands with his back to the room, looking down through the great glass wall at the machines and barracks and earthworks below, and the ruined forest beyond. In the clear light of the smokeless hazy sunrise the world seems more stripped than usual, pale and sickly and spindly with metal and stone.

If he sees anything else, Sauron does not speak of it, and Thorin’s eyes are not sharp enough to catch the things that snag his master’s gaze.

Thorin stands and waits, taking in the room. Thranduil is not here; Bilbo is, crouching beside the throne with a tense and sweating complexion. The Witch-king announces him with distaste and leaves him, gliding to the steps of the dais.

Sauron’s voice echoes in the room. “Your kin approach,” he says, and such poison is in his voice that even Bilbo quails.

Thorin does not reply; he is not certain that Sauron wants an answer. After a moment Sauron turns to face him, and his eyes are wrathful.

“I will need you,” he says without further preamble. “I need every scrap of knowledge in your mind; I need you laid bare to me. You will take my ring now, and serve me.”

“My lord,” protests Bilbo, but a glance from Sauron sets him quivering into silence.

“You will receive the promised rewards,” says Sauron, “but your duties will be immediate and great. You will go at my side to sortie with the leaders of this assault, and to lend me your insight.”

To be, Thorin realizes, a willing party to the destruction of his own kingdom, and to the slaughter of his only remaining kin in cold blood. “Surely my lord already knows my mind, and the minds of all Erebor,” Thorin says carefully. “You have no need of me yet, and I am certain Bilbo’s work is vital—”

Sauron cuts him off with a curt gesture, turning to look out from the wall of windows again. “Our agent in Erebor has been silent since the coup,” he admits. “I cannot imagine why the Naugrim risk so much now, nor how they came so close to us without being seen. And more perplexing: my scouts report Mirkwood elves guiding them!” He shakes his head in disbelief, and cold rage boils from him like fog, filling the room with fearful silence.

For a moment, Thorin thinks Sauron will lose control entirely and butcher them all; but he regains his demeanor, and the heavy shadow of death recedes from the room, and Sauron’s shoulders set into the lordly posture of a king in full regalia, though Sauron himself now wears nothing more ornate than a jerkin embroidered black-on-black with serrated scale-patterns and stars.

“Your rewards,” he says, and nods to the orc guards, and a moment later a crowd of them rushes into the room, bearing a coffer, a chest, and the gray-cloaked form of Thranduil himself.

The orcs set about opening their burdens, revealing rich dark clothing and a heavy black crown; but Thorin’s eyes are only for Thranduil, who is no longer clad in orc finery. Perhaps, Thorin hopes, he was stripped of the knife when he shed that wretched heavy skirt—but no, as he watches, Thranduil meets his eyes and looks away, and Thorin sees how his weight shifts to accommodate the bulk of something concealed beneath his robe.

His captors have left it to him. Thorin can see how they gather about him, how they let him conceal his prize. One bares his teeth mockingly and then spits. Thranduil must have told them he needed it for his own protection; he must have told them that Thorin would hurt him, if he were not armed.

Thorin allows himself to be stripped before the full council chamber and dressed; one enormous, brawny orc, Thranduil’s protector whose broken finger is still crooked from their earlier encounter, crowns Thorin with a spittle-flecked sneer and hisses in his face. The whole time, Thorin’s eyes dart about the room, seeking escape, searching for a way to stop Thranduil from his suicidal madness.

Bilbo is weeping on the dais, crawling, pleading with his lord. The sound of it does not disgust Thorin as it should, but then Bilbo is not begging for his life, nor debasing himself for a gift of power. “Please,” he whimpers, “my lord, my dearest master, let me stay at your side, don’t choose him over me, not him—he doesn’t love you—not like I do—”

Sauron looks on him with something horribly close to tenderness, and Thorin’s heart wrenches in his chest. “I do not despise you,” he says, with regret in his voice. “I fear that you have given your love where none is left to return. Give me the ring, Bilbo.”

Bilbo clutches his fist to his heart, closing around the ring on his finger in an agony of indecision; then, slowly, with sobs and groans, he extends his hand to his master, and clenches his jaw and eyes as Sauron gently slips the ring from his finger.

“Now, Thorin,” begins Sauron, and Bilbo through his groans and tears catches Thorin’s eye, grim and desolate and _ready._ Thorin sees Thranduil adjust his stance, ready to break from his captors and throw his life away at Bilbo’s signal, and Sauron beckons to him, calls him to come up and be the distraction that will draw Thranduil’s knife from his robes and let poor mad Bilbo try his doomed idiotic scheme.

So instead of approaching the dais with its deadly waiting dilemma, he falls on his knees where he stands, hands outstretched to reach for Sauron and the ring, and lets his fear and distress show on his face, shaking in all his limbs as Sauron waits impatiently for his approach.

Thranduil moves, and the orcs look at him askance, not yet fully reacting. Bilbo bares his teeth and gnashes them, seeing his chance slip away, and Thranduil is slipping from his captors’ surrounding, hand folding into his tunic, shoulders committing to the forward dash—

When Sauron sighs, no disappointed huff but rather a roar of breath that betrays utter fury, and steps down from the dais to cross the room in a few strides to Thorin’s crumpled form.

Thranduil staggers, and the orcs catch him, hissing; Bilbo reaches out for the hem of Sauron’s robes as he passes, and misses, and cries out in despair. They are both too far to reach their target when Sauron takes Thorin’s hand in a cruel, burning grip, holds his arm aloft, and presses the ring upon his finger with his powerful, broken hands.

Power surges out of him in that moment, a scalding rush that burns from Thorin’s captured hand through the rest of his body in a single moment, like the power that he has felt before but in the way that a candle is like an inferno. It pulls his will up by the roots, tightens and twists in his gut, owns him inside and out, and recedes a half-second later as if it never existed.

He sees now, throbbing and aching and twisting in Sauron’s grip, what Bilbo meant to do. This close, he can see the exhaustion in Sauron’s eyes; there is a great weight on him that Thorin can feel, through the weird threads of binding, a thing released which his lord regrets releasing, and which requires of him so much effort to restrain that even this, even the examination and binding of a single dwarf-king’s mind, is a stress upon him.

This is when they were meant to strike.

And Thorin can also see, as the invading presence of Sauron’s searching mind recedes, that even with this moment of expenditure there was never any hope for them, that Sauron is more powerful and more untouchable than any creature who has walked the rest of Middle-Earth, that they would have failed and died in agony and scarcely have been noticed in their passing. Sauron is concerned; his armies are strong, but he is stretched thin, and his power has returned to him at a precarious time, with his enemies arrayed against him. His power has returned, has returned… a burning wheel, a flaming eye, a golden ring…

Thorin awakens feeling naked, scoured, raw. He has been laid so bare that he can feel the places where his mind was rasped away by the friction of Sauron’s scrutiny. He is gasping, choking, drowning—

He does not feel what he expected to feel, boiling lust or poisonous hatred. He knows, in an impersonal way, that he hates the binding of his will, and he wishes he had come by the ring without being close enough to his lord to be so taken. It might have been a lovely thing to have, without all of Sauron’s force bent on it in close quarter. In this way Thorin discovers that he is not numbed, not smitten with devotion—he has been left his resentment and spite and longing for independence. These things reassure him that he is still himself, and he finds it easy to let himself be owned, knowing that he does not have to like it.

The ring is _so_ beautiful. Warm on his finger, it turns his left hand into a work of art; its simple, solid make turns everything around it into gold. He marvels at the lightness of his burden; he had thought he would be driven insane with greed, or flayed with jealousy, as soon as he put it on.

He decides the ring is worth the cost of his duties. Ah, yes; he has duties to his lord. There is a war on, an attacking army. It will make him very sad to see Erebor broken, but he will grieve later, when his lord’s will is served and Thorin is left to his sorrow, but the ring will remain his own and Erebor will rebuild under his ownership, under his possession. He opens his mouth to say these things, and instead he hears his own voice on different syllables. “Where is Thranduil,” he says, and shakes his head in bewilderment, and then the name goes through his body like lightning and he repeats: “Where is Thranduil? Give him to me.”

“Eager,” says Sauron, standing over him with satisfaction on his exhausted face. “You _are_ an avaricious creature, aren’t you? Very well; he is yours, my gift.” He waves one hand generously, and adds before Thorin can move: “You must not touch him until Erebor is dealt with, or he will be taken from you. This is your duty, King Thorin.”

Thorin will do anything, anything—but faint movement draws his gaze, and he sees the glimmer of white-gold hair almost obscured by orcs. Red fury descends; he bellows his rage, he orders them to unhand his prize, he is almost close enough to them to taste the blood before Sauron’s will bends upon him like a crushing mountain and he staggers to a halt.

“I see you will not be separated,” muses Sauron. “I shall regret this. Very well; when it is done, I will arrange things more carefully. Guilt will bend the spine as surely as greed, and there are many golden-haired elves in the world to offer false hope of redemption.”

Thorin cannot imagine what he means, but with furious determination he waits for Thranduil to be escorted alongside him, and though he is not permitted to touch he watches so keenly that Thranduil reddens and turns his eyes away.

He had feared hurting Thranduil, had he not? Thorin sees now that this is impossible. He is well under control, his lord’s and his own, and he has a secret that he cherishes like a precious stone concealed in his sleeve. Has he not told himself a hundred times since the coup, since their exposure on the mountain, that he does not want Thranduil’s body so much as he wants Thranduil’s safety?

Somewhere in his mind echoes the word _mine_ , and he treasures it. _Mine_. Thranduil is his now. How can he ever dream of hurting his most precious possession? How could anything ever make him wish injury or pain for Thranduil, who is his own, who belongs to him forever?


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please heed warnings; consent is as dubious here as it gets.

Wargs are nothing like ponies, but Thorin adapts well enough to riding one, as he adapts to orc-armor and a full helm besides; the parley will be scarcely a league from Dol Goldur, but Sauron is impatient, and it is important to make a good show. Thorin would expect no less of a great lord’s entourage, and for this reason—his duty to his lord—he tolerates the stench and the back-breaking gait of his mount.

Before him, Sauron rides on a massive white warhorse, a steed of Rohan whose beauty surpasses anything Thorin has seen before, doubtless their king’s tribute; beside him, the Witch-King reins in a dapple-gray gelding with rolling eyes and froth about its lips. Behind them, Bilbo rides a great warg as if born to it, his slight frame leaning and tensing with each great bound.

Thorin hardly notices. Alongside him are a full thirty great orcs, laughing and snarling, though they flinch at even the faint dapples of sunlight that fall through the thinned fog. And within their number rides another which is not an orc, though wrapped in stinking hides and decorated with grisly trophies like one of their own, streams of white hair pouring from beneath a cheaply-made, tarnished helmet that hides Thranduil’s grim face.

Thorin’s eyes are bound to him; his warg finds its own way across the ruined earth, and its harness hangs slack against its throat. Thorin has better things to watch than the ground.

By the time the sun is high enough that the orcs are truly complaining, they have reached their destination: a broad stream in what was once deep forest, where few whole trees remain. The water is swift and cold; the banks overhang, and the shallows beneath them extend only a few feet, separated from one another by the deceptively gentle eddies that bely a deep and tortuous cleft in the underlying stone. It is not a stream for foot-troops to cross, and the banks are a full thirty ells apart, far enough that no dwarven weapon will easily reach across it.

Where Sauron and his troops stand, the ground is thick with ash. What trees remain are scarred and blasted from fire, though spring comes even to Dol Goldur and their black branches are furred with new buds. Thorin dismounts, and his ankles sink into the ash as if into new snow.

Beside his foot, some green thing has pierced the ruin, and rises new to meet the sun.

Across the stream, no fire has created a layer of destruction to offer its shelter to saplings. The waste and garbage of some mining expedition has been hurled across, where it lies half-devoured by vines; even the battered trees are thick with foliage, growing in their twisted wreckage. Here, the world is clean and ready for new life; across the stream, green things have chosen a different path to reclaim the earth, and Thorin wonders which way is more beautiful.

On the far shore stand some thirty dwarves, fully armed and clad in the best steel of Erebor. At their forefront, gilded and proud with fury, stands Fili himself.

He does not see Thorin, whose thin steel armor is better proof against eyesight than against weaponry. He only sees Sauron, and Thorin feels a thin surge of pride, that he bears that vision with such a straight spine.

The pride lasts for a moment; then the knowledge comes to him from Sauron’s mind, whose tendrils are still threaded through his own awareness, that there is an echo of familiar power from beyond the water; that Fili is carrying a ring like his own.

Sauron wants him to know this. He could not know, otherwise. The knowledge itself is a question. _How long has Fili had this ring? Did he take it before he overthrew you, or after?_

Thorin wants to blame his fall on the cunning of the ring, on the avarice and brilliance given by its strange power. Now that one of its kind is bound to him, however, he knows where he has felt its lure before, and he knows what it was that Kili carried when he dragged Thranduil down into the chasm. He knows what force drew him to the corpses of his kin.

For decades, he has believed that he strove in the dark against his own innate greed. The tomb behind the door has been the thorn in his palm, reminding him not to grasp at what he desires, teaching him to see his own longings as the madness of a would-be defiler of corpses. For all this time, unknowing, he has striven against the whisper of the heavy gold thing that now binds him to his lord.  

He knows what Heorhod sought, and why the bones were scattered before Kili’s departure. He knows why Kili chose that place for his last stand; he knows that Kili fell with his prize still upon his finger.

The expedition to recover his corpse must have been expensive, and dangerous. Thorin wonders how many other dwarves died to bring Kili’s body back to his brother, and whether Fili sought the broken corpse on its own merit, or for the alluring power of the thing it carried with it when it fell.

Thorin can almost hear Sauron’s low laugh. This was his design, for Kili’s ruin to bring Fili power. Heorhod obeyed more than one master, Thorin realizes, and neither Bilbo nor the Witch-king ever laid their hands upon the thing Sauron most craved; and when Kili was returned, half-dead, neither Bilbo nor the Witch-king knew the enormity of what was borne back to Erebor.

Bilbo meant to begin a war. Sauron meant to overthrow a kingdom.

In the choking foliage of the distant bank, Fili shouts: “Hail, false king of Mirkwood! We come to discuss your terms of surrender.”

Sauron does not respond immediately. He is, to the eyes of dwarves, unthinkably tall from astride his white horse; he merely nods to Bilbo, who reins his warg to the side and shouts in return: “My master bids you welcome, and asks why you have come in arms, when he has for so long sought friendship?”

“I did not ask you, orc-spawn,” bellows Fili. Thorin wonders how he can mistake Bilbo for an orc, when they once slept back-to-back on their near-forgotten adventure, but only for a moment; Bilbo is so different now, hidden behind the mask of a heavy helm, and Fili has no reason to expect him here.

“I am the Mouth which speaks,” shouts Bilbo. “I serve my lord in all things, and my voice is his voice. Why have you come in violence, when my master seeks peace? Why have you allied with a broken nation of elves instead of my master’s benevolent might?”

His voice is utterly different; his tones are all changed, the timbre of his voice rich and strange. Thorin, who has heard them both speak, recognizes Sauron’s voice even from Bilbo’s throat. Still, Fili is bristling, and Thorin understands: between the nations of men, such posturing is acceptable and even admirable, but to dwarves it reeks of pretension and disingenuous dealings.

Even as he thinks it, he feels the thought plucked from his mind as a plum from the stem, and feels the adjustment in Sauron’s plan. The white horse shifts, goaded by some invisible pressure, and Sauron himself steps down from the saddle and holds up his hand to Bilbo.

“I will speak for myself,” he says, his voice awful and compelling as grinding rock, “though it pains my throat; a king may speak to a king.”

Bilbo retreats, and Thorin from his place at Sauron’s heel sees the slant of rejection on his lips, which are the only visible sliver of his skin. The gambit is successful, however, and Fili’s face saved. The bait, the ruse, will not offend: Sauron is injured in the throat, but seeks to do him honor nonetheless.

Thorin is serving his master well, and the knowledge is satisfying to his bones.

“I ask again, with my own lips,” says Sauron, “what brings you to my kingdom with weapons in your hands? Long have I sought your alliance; never have I done you wrong.”

Fili smiles, thin and grim, and reaches into a bag held by his companion, and pulls out a handful of some gory shaggy thing, all red and gold and filthy. He hurls it, and orcs scatter before its path, expecting some sort of weapon, but it only a head separated from its body, beginning to decay, its long white-blond hair tangling in the ash as it rolls.

The head is Heorhod’s.

“No wrong,” shouts Fili, his voice nearly breaking with its force, “when your servants tortured my brother and broke his body, when your spies invaded my very hall, when your offers of friendship brought death and sorrow to my family?”

They must have tortured him. Thorin grimaces, thinking of the meals Heorhod spent beside the powerful and wise of Erebor, how easily Thorin had dismissed him as a useless drunk, how Erebor had lauded him as a hero when Kili was brought home to die. Now, under his new master, Thorin sees him as twice a traitor, though he knows that any information he gave must have been stolen by the most acute agony.

Sauron bows his head in a show of sympathy. Such is the force of his presence that even the smallest motion of his form conveys emotion across the stream; he does not need to shout. After a weighted moment, he speaks, and his voice for all its roughness is sweet as honey, and begs the listener to commiserate.

“My servants, yes,” he says, though he does not indict Bilbo or the Witch-King with his gaze. “Without my permission, they sought to gain my favor, and instead undermined the love I wished to foster between our lands. They stole your brother without my knowledge, and tormented him under my roof, and when I discovered their misdeeds I struck them down and sent your brother back to you, intact with all his belongings— and the guilty spy as well, that justice might be done.” _All his belongings_ , Thorin notes, is a subtle probe, and if Fili is paying attention he will recognize that his treasure is revealed; but Sauron adds: “He must have hoped to trick you with his lies, to find shelter instead of the shame his deeds deserved. I take his guilt as my own, and offer remonstrance—I take no offense at your assault, and I ask you again: may we not be allies, and you accept my gifts?”

The lie is sweet, and easy to swallow, and Fili seems to consider it. He turns to the side, consulting the captain of the guard, who stands at his elbow, and looks behind himself into the cluster of dwarves who surround him, as if seeking any dissent. Thus counseled, he turns back to face Sauron and shouts: “Your gifts are poison, and your words cob-webs to snare the foolish! You would rule the world, and make us all your puppets—but we will not be your pets, you festering lord of orcs. The Dwarves are for the Dwarves!”

Sauron draws himself up tall, and Thorin feels the pressure of his mind like a burden upon his thoughts, and knows the other dwarves feel it too. “And yet you have allied with elves,” he says, “who have been your enemies since before any of you were born, and left you to die in your time of need. When I offer riches! When I offer weapons against your enemies, and wisdom unmatched since the ancients! When I have taken even the criminal who was once your king and made him whole in mind, and brought his murderous insanity to heel…”

Thorin knows what is expected of him, and complies. He steps forward, to where all present may see him, though it brings his weight to the creaking soil at the very lip of the overhang, and there he removes his helm and lets his beard tumble free.

The eyes of all his kin are upon him, drinking in the shame of his orcish armor and his broken allegiance. Thorin’s throat tightens, and his eyes burn with the humiliation of it, how clearly he has been made Sauron’s slave. Across the water, Fili stares at him aghast and stricken, seeing the depth to which Thorin has fallen, seeing the power of Sauron to take what he desires.

Then Fili’s eyes widen, as if he is realizing something dreadful. Thorin wonders if the ring is speaking to him. “So you admit,” he says, “that you seek to make us all your slaves. We have nothing more to exchange save blows,” he adds. Clearly he means this to be decisive, a parting blow to end the conversation, but there is a hint of urgency in his voice that betrays him. Sauron leans forward slightly, catching that hint and closing in on it.

What is he afraid of, Thorin wonders, still holding his helmet under his arm and feeling the earth settle beneath his feet. What is it that makes him want to cease negotiations _now_?

He knows better than to think that Fili fears _him_.

“Will you not stay a little longer,” croons Sauron, “and speak with me face to face, and see if we may benefit one another without bloodshed?”

“There is no point,” says Fili, and his voice is certainly hurried now. “We have nothing to say to one another; keep your poisoned words to yourself.” He is beginning to back away, to turn aside, and Thorin tenses, anticipating an assault, preparing for a stream-crossing. They will certainly take many casualties, for wargs are poor swimmers, but what a coup if Fili and his guards might be taken without a clash of armies!

A ringing silence falls, only broken by the whicker of Sauron’s white horse, tossing its head as it backs away from the wargs. Even as the orcs grow silent, reading the tension in the air—even as Thorin’s knuckles tighten on his helm, preparing to re-arm and mount at Sauron’s word—another voice rings out from the far shore, and Fili freezes in place.

“We have nothing to say,” shouts the speaker, “save to discuss your surrender! You speak of gifts, but we have gifts of our own—”

The speaker is carried forward on a litter and set upon the ground by Fili, and Thorin feels his bile rise: it is a dwarf in half-armor with twisted legs, a dwarf with long dark hair and a sparse beard, whose face Thorin thought not to see again except in nightmares. His expression is beatific, burning-eyed, the corners of his mouth turned up in his delighted anger. Thorin’s knees tremble and he takes a step back, lest he fall.

Kili laughs at him. The sound seems to shake all the air around them, until Thorin realizes that the trees are rustling not from his nephew’s manic laughter but from the weight of elves, hundreds of them, more than Thorin had thought remained in the world outside of hidden Imladris. An arrow arcs effortlessly over the stream and pierces the ground at Sauron’s feet, its white quills shivering from impact.

Thorin hardly sees the elves. He has been heavy with guilt at Kili’s demise, but now that he sees the lad’s face, he remembers the knife cutting Thranduil’s skin, remembers how his prize was nearly destroyed by Kili’s greed. Wrath wells up in him like nausea, and he roars: “You traitorous swine, you ungrateful child! Thieving wretch! You will destroy all of Erebor for your revenge!”

He would cast himself into the stream, armor and all, to reach Kili and smite him; but Sauron’s will leans heavy on him, and he subsides into shaking silence, his throat working with unspoken insults and his vision turning red. Across the water, Kili laughs again, and calls out: “Kinslayer! Weak and lecherous would-be king! I will destroy all of Erebor, and gladly, for one mouthful of your master’s blood!”

Thorin cannot imagine how Kili survived; he must have caught on a shelf, or fallen on some outcropping of stone in the depths, and been rescued before he bled to death. His legs are clearly shattered beyond repair, but Thorin sees how Fili’s eyes turn to him even in his fear, and understands that Kili is now the ruler of Erebor, whoever wears the crown.

And no sooner does he realize this than he sees the ring, lovely and golden and shining on Kili’s finger as Thorin might have imagined, potent in Kili’s possession despite the lad’s wounds.

Potent enough to lead him to power, to make him clever beyond his madness, to give him whatever tool has brought hundreds of elves to stand in the tree-verge with drawn bows in his defense. Thorin wracks his mind, searching for the answer, struggling to comprehend why they face dwarves and elves united, why Fili’s eyes flit from Sauron to the elves in growing dread, why—

Why the appearance of Thorin, living and in Sauron’s grasp, should be such a blow to Erebor. He can offer no threat to his nephews’ dominion; they have already had him executed, him and his beloved together.

 _Ah_.

“Ah,” echoes Sauron, and Thorin knows his thoughts have been overheard. “For one who accuses his would-be friends of falsehood, you have not been entirely truthful with your allies, have you? Or should I call them your slaves, since you have indentured them with false pretences?”

Kili’s voice is clear and fierce and bright. “I have promised them a fair price for their service. Tell them you are fairly bought, my lady.”

From the trees behind, one elf speaks, clearly the leader of the elves under Kili’s command— bitter about the eyes, her fawn-red hair in sword-braids rather than an archer’s plait. “He holds something of great value to us,” she says. The words sound like ash in her throat.

Sauron laughs, and Thorin shudders as he realizes that Kili’s mad laugh is nearly the echo of Sauron’s own. “Blackmail,” he muses aloud. “How… _practical_. We would make better allies than you think, O king of Erebor—” and here he clearly addresses Kili, not Fili—“for I, too, have offered my servant Thorin a fair price to be my slave, and I too hold something of great value to him.”

He does not need to motion; he is a god, or something like one, so he merely inclines his head, and the orcs push Thranduil forward and pull at his clothing and armor until his helmet wrenches free of his head and his clothing is nearly in ribbons, his modesty scarcely maintained, more clothed by the shadows of burned boughs above than by any shred of cloth.

It takes but a moment to strip him; it takes the space of a breath longer for him to regain his balance at the bank-edge, and to pull himself upright. Thorin’s whole body longs after him, and only Sauron’s iron grip on his mind holds him back, trembling and straining at his mental bonds.

Thranduil is so vulnerable there, on the shore alone. He needs to be protected. He needs Thorin’s body wrapped about him, Thorin’s cloak across his shoulders, Thorin’s name branded into his flesh. Thranduil should not be offered as a game-piece against a lot of unwashed dwarves—he should lie at Thorin’s feet, and press grateful kisses to the arches of his boots, as once he did in Erebor, when Thorin was king and did not care.

Kili is not unaffected. His bravado disappears, and raw hunger floods his face, an expression somewhere between despair and relief. Thorin wants to kill him again. Fili pleads with him quietly; he wants to turn and leave, and he does not understand why his brother is so affected.

Sauron sees how all eyes turn to his half-naked prisoner, and satisfaction settles on his features. The elves stand frozen in their tracks, their bows lowered, their shock and uncertainty plain on every face; Kili’s mouth is half-open and his body drawn tight as a wire; Thorin is sick with furious jealousy, and knows Sauron can taste it on him.

“I see,” muses Sauron aloud, “that I have something of great value to each of you. Who, then, will claim this prize? You have only to offer me your allegiance, and he is yours.”

Thorin jerks in Sauron’s mental grasp. He cannot mean to give Thranduil to his foes—he cannot take Thorin’s ring-price from him, not after the sacrifice Thorin has made.

Kili is visibly shaken. The line of his mouth twists, and his crooked fingers tighten into fists. Thorin understands, though it nauseates him: Kili came here for revenge not only against Sauron, but also against his own kingdom, for destroying the beautiful thing he craved while he lay in the chasm bleeding. He meant to spend Erebor in suicidal wrath, to see every good and evil thing alike destroyed in retribution.

Except that Thranduil is still alive, and vengeance is no longer enough. Except that there is a reason, now, for Kili to live. Except that Kili is, in some ways, wiser than his uncle, and sees the terror of loss on Thorin’s face, and remembers torture and broken promises, and knows that Sauron will no more give Thranduil to him than he will leave Erebor to rule itself.

“We will take him and go,” Kili attempts. “For the elf, I will recognize Dol Goldur as a sovereign nation, but I will not give you one more acre than you already rule.”

Fili clutches his brother’s hand, confused, pleading. Sauron merely raises his eyebrows. “You offer me nothing and ask for much,” he reasons. “With the elf, I grant you the _practicality_ of all his kin, do I not? Even if you will only kill him inside the hour, unless I miss my guess.”

Kili swallows, and Thorin can see him struggling. “We will grant you free passage along the River Running,” he says, “as far north as Esgaroth.”

“Oh, well offered,” scorns Sauron. “Such a strategic advantage! An un-navigable trickle, delivering my troops to the forsaken Rhun.” He claps his hands. “Will Mirkwood offer me their allegiance instead, and take their king and their freedom from this pestilence of dwarves?”

The red-haired leader clutches her bow closer. She wants the rescue, Thorin can tell; perhaps, in some earlier life, she was as impulsive as any tree-dweller. But a lifetime has passed for all of them in the last few years, and she only shakes her head sharply, sorrowfully. “We, too, will offer our retreat for his safety; but he would not enslave us for his freedom, and neither will we.”

Sauron gestures broadly at the far shore. “Then I offer a compromise. You need swear nothing to me; you may take him and go, if you will only do me one favor. Does not the compulsion of Erebor sit ill with you, now that you have seen the lie? I only ask that you show them your… disappointment. Shoot them down, and you will have your freedom and your king. It is all I ask: an arrow in each dwarf’s throat.”

The sound of drawn blades nearly drowns out the babble of the stream, but the elves stand still even as the dwarves arm themselves.

“We are the last two kingdoms that stand between you and all the lands from the Misty Mountains to Mordor,” the elf-leader says slowly. “If Erebor falls, we are alone. Liars or no, they are the best hope we have.” From this distance, Thorin cannot tell whether her hands are as steady as her voice; nor does he care, not with Thranduil still standing at the brink, almost naked and utterly vulnerable, ankles gray with ash. He is only a few steps away, at Sauron’s other side; even the Witch-king has withdrawn from the three of them, and if only Sauron would release him, Thorin could bury his face in Thranduil’s hair in a matter of moments.

Sauron’s tone is incredulous. “Do you then trust dwarves to watch your backs? When they have lied to you, left you to perish, used you for their own ends? When two of their three kings have tried to rape your king to death? You see him here, whole and unharmed, because I have protected him, fed him, given him my favor; you would deliver him to the filthy Naugrim just to spite me? You are fools.”

From the corner of his eye, Thorin sees Bilbo stiffen, eyes glazed, clearly receiving some hidden message from their master. Bilbo waves a hand and the orcs dismount, forming a half-ring about them, jeering and laughing. The white horse dances, clearly unsettled.

Sauron pays it no mind. “Very well,” he says, stepping back a few paces, until he is the keystone of the orcs’ half-ring, and Thorin and Thranduil are surrounded against the stream-bank by an amphitheater of cackling orcs. “If you have no use for him, then I shall dispose of him.”

“No,” says Thorin. His voice is thick from the choking immobilization of Sauron’s will, and Thorin is surprised to actually hear his own voice. “No, he is _mine_.”

Sauron chuckles, indulgent, condescending. “Then protect him,” he goads, and Thorin feels the grip on his limbs fall away, and in a moment he is on Thranduil, dragging him to the earth.

He will protect him. He will _protect_ Thranduil. This is the secret he has kept from his lord: he wants nothing more than Thranduil’s safety, not even his own pleasure. He does not want to violate Thranduil, as he once did; he only wants Thranduil himself.

He will do Thranduil no harm, he says as he peels away his armor, which seems at the moment the right thing to do. He will never hurt his lover, his prize; he is covering Thranduil with his body, to protect him, to keep him safe. There is an awful pressure in his mind, the sensation of shifting tendrils like puppet-wires, and Thorin realizes to his horror that he has stripped to his trousers and halfway out of them, that he is stroking himself, that he is pinning Thranduil to the ground with one hand and crouching over him like a beast preparing to sink its teeth into its dying prey.

“No,” he chokes again, but his voice is weaker, and his body moves in jerking strife against his own desires. He grasps Thranduil by the throat and feels the convulsion of swallowing beneath his palm, and he feels sweat spring up across his brow, and he croaks again: “No!”

Sauron only shrugs. “If any of you change your mind,” he offers across the stream, “speak now, before the moment is past, or see what happens when an elf trusts a dwarf.”

Hundreds of bowstrings draw tight in the trees beyond the stream, and Thorin knows he is marked for death. It does not matter. Beneath him, Thranduil is struggling, grasping his sides, grasping his hair. “Let him go,” Thranduil shouts, and Thorin realizes that he is shouting at Sauron, that Thranduil does not believe that Thorin would hurt him.

“As you wish,” says Sauron, but the force in Thorin’s mind redoubles, and he feels as if his conscious thought is being stripped from his bones, leaving him tied to an animal in violent rut. His fist wraps in Thranduil’s hair and twists, exposing Thranduil’s throat, craning Thranduil’s face away until Thranduil is gasping against the dirt. His free hand grasps Thranduil’s thigh and wrenches it, forcing his legs apart.

Thorin wants to scream. Beneath him Thranduil is still lithe, and he has wanted for so long, but even in the depths of his darkest madness he has never dreamt of this. He feels drugged; his mind is reeling one way and his body surging the other, each thought splintering into syllables. His cock is hard; he is weeping, shaking, sweating. He prays that the first elven arrow will come quickly, before he is a murderer.

Thranduil, still struggling beneath him, his teeth bared and his eyes straining to the side to see Thorin’s face, at last goes still and gasping. The cords of his neck stand out. Thorin can see the horror in his eyes, the realization, the feral dread.

If it were only the greed of the ring, Thorin could resist it. He has spent decades resisting it, has he not? Even with its whisper creeping through the stone of the Mountain into his sleeping ears, he managed to sleep beside his lover without harming him, without violating him. This is entirely different—this is the full power of a dark god brought to bear on his body, with no thought spared for his mind.

The more he fights, the more he feels himself pulled apart. If he could bring himself to submit his mind, to embrace the nightmare that Sauron is wreaking with his flesh, it would be bearable—even enjoyable, even satisfying. Thranduil’s flesh is delicious beneath his palms, pressed into bruising where his hands knead and squeeze.

It would be easy, but Thorin is so repulsed by the idea of it that each breath tears from his throat with a groan of horror. He wants; but not like this, and not against Thranduil’s will, not as an expression of Sauron’s power, not as a weapon to destroy the thing he loves.

The shock of silence which has fallen across the water swells to murmuring, then cries of outrage. Any moment now the first arrow will fall, and Thorin thinks Sauron will not protect him, not when his two enemies are so near to each other’s throats.

The blood of Durin is a precious coin, but not too precious to spend.

Thranduil cries out again, but there are words in his cry, the liquid syllables of his native tongue. Thorin does not speak it; but Sauron does. “Hold your fire,” he is saying; “it is done to him, not by him.” Sauron sneers, and the beast of Thorin’s body roars with the echo of Sauron’s anger. He feels the impact of his hand on Thranduil’s face, the sting of the open slap, as clearly as he has felt any other sensation in his life, but even as he cries out against the cruelty of it he can feel how rage and lust are feeding into the furnace of his breast. Sweat falls from his brow and courses  along his throat as Thorin struggles to master himself, and fails; helpless, Thorin grits his teeth in hatred against his master.

His mind is coming apart. Sauron means to make him participate or else to see him perish.

The elves half-lower their bows, keeping their arrows nocked, obedient but suspicious. Thranduil’s lip is bloodied, but he manages to call out: “He will not harm me—”

“Such simple trust,” Sauron calls out in his mocking thunderous voice. “But I tell you that unless you accept my generous bargain, I will let this beast tear your mighty king’s flesh before your eyes.”

Kili breaks his stricken silence with an awful cry. The whites of his eyes are visible even from this distance, and he seems to have bitten his hand bloody. “Shoot him,” he shrieks. “Shoot him now! Kill him, shoot him down!” The elves stand their ground, and Kili screams at them until he loses his breath in a racking cough. The whole time a half-smile plays about Sauron’s mouth, and Thorin’s hands tear at the last scraps of Thranduil’s clothing, and Thorin’s mouth stretches into a rictus as he struggles to beg for mercy.

Still no intervening arrow falls. Kili coughs and weeps in the distance, and from the corner of his eye Thorin sees the Mirkwood captain press her fist to her heart in silent salute, and lower her bow.

They will let their king die, then. Thorin cannot fathom it. Sauron, too, is bewildered, then furious, then spiteful; his eyes narrow, and then he shrugs, cruel and uncaring. “Very well then,” he says. “Let him be broken.”

The strain is too great. Thorin feels a sharp pain in his right eye, a burst capillary, a spreading star of blood. His ears are ringing. The working of his throat seems like a foreign mechanism, and he bites his tongue bloody as he manages to spit out: “I will—not—”

At this, Thranduil writhes until he can look Thorin in the eye; his arm relaxes from where he is striving to hold Thorin at bay. The sick terror in his face becomes something else, alarm and compassion, and with both hands he reaches up to cradle Thorin’s face, to whisper urgently: “Do not be broken for my sake, _melamin_ , do not fight him, he is stronger than us both.” His thumbs are like brands on Thorin’s cheekbones, pressing into the taut distress of muscle beneath, and his eyes _know_.

“I will not—live,” chokes Thorin, “if you—”

“No, no, hush,” murmurs Thranduil, tilting his head, pleading with his brow. “I take this willingly—do you hear me? I take this _willingly_.” His words sink through the ringing hum, through the black spots opening in Thorin’s vision, and like a key in a lock they turn Thorin’s mind at the root, realigning it, rejoining body to mind. Thorin can feel himself slipping, his awareness being swallowed by the tide of lust that surges in his skin. Surely Thranduil cannot mean it, surely—but the burden is so great, and the process of surrender so inexorable, that he can taste how his protests turn to groans and how the rhythm of his movements pounds deep in his belly.

He is losing. Any moment now, he will be lost, he will be consumed. He turns his head and bites at Thranduil’s fingers, licks at them, sucks the pad of his thumb, and Thranduil watches him with tears in his eyes.

Kili’s shrieks, the hushed aversion of elvish eyes, the cackles of orcs, even the weight of Sauron’s gaze all seem to fade into meaninglessness. The fragments of Thorin’s mind are reconvening, like dew gathering on cold stone. With each concession he makes to Sauron’s compulsion, with each inch of friction that fuels his lust, he feels himself returning to reality, and shudders to realize how close he has come to the brink of utter destruction.

Thranduil is not resisting him at all, now, merely waiting, only searching Thorin’s face for the return of reason. _Willingly_ , he has said, and Thorin can only trust him.

The compulsion is still strange, like a drug, like the throb of fever in his gut. He knows that the respite is only a moment long; Sauron’s will must be carried to completion. Thorin sobs for breath and for his sanity, pulling back to align himself and lifting Thranduil’s hips. He licks his palm, slicks himself with spit, hopes it will be enough. The head of his cock rests so easily _between_ , where muscle flickers under sensitive skin.

A moment’s pause, and the return of stabbing pain with it. Thorin tells himself that he is grateful for the small hope offered him, that Thranduil will forgive him even in death, for the word _willingly_ ; he tells himself that he is not drowning with anger at the violation of his mind. He repeats them, steels himself to move, repeats the words, repeats—

“Do it,” says Thranduil, his voice short and tight, the sprawl of his hips tense in Thorin’s grasp. “I am so sorry, Thorin. It must be done; do it with love.”

The key in the lock completes its turn; the star-flashes in Thorin’s strained vision resolve into crystal clarity. The compulsion of his body seems a very small thing, suddenly, and the nauseating pressure of Sauron’s will turns into the cringe of an unwanted voyeur.

He bends to press his open mouth to Thranduil’s throat, to let his long hair fall heavy as a curtain about Thranduil’s shoulders; then he surrenders, and thrusts forward, and lets himself be consumed and devoured and drawn into Thranduil’s body in defeat.

There is no hint of resistance. There is no tearing, no unbearable cramp of muscle to be breached—only the arch of Thranduil’s back and the roll of his head, the open wet gasp of his mouth, the tight and twitching heat into which Thorin is falling. In some fleeting corner of his mind, Thorin wonders what he expected of a creature thousands of years old whose hair does not fall without permission; but the thought is gone in the rolling red tide of arousal as soon as it arises, and he groans out his pleasure and terror into the column of muscle beneath his mouth.

And Thranduil groans back.

A waiting hush hangs over both parties like a fog. Thorin can feel Sauron’s anticipation, the longing in his ancient heart for Thranduil’s destruction and Thorin’s despair. Across the water, an elf keens quietly, but no other sound arises save the voice of the stream itself. Thorin draws back and thrusts again, and Thranduil gasps with the force of it, but his pale hand strokes up the length of Thorin’s bicep and plunges into his hair, pressing his mouth to Thranduil’s own throat in unmistakable desire.

“Yes,” breathes Thranduil, and Thorin forgets there was ever a compulsion laid upon him. He bites where his mouth rests, feeling the reverberation of Thranduil’s voice through his teeth, feeling the convulsion of Thranduil’s sides where his hands roam to grip at Thranduil’s ribs. The delirious heat around his cock is almost secondary to the shudder of Thranduil’s belly, the taste of his oak-salt skin, the tangle of his fingers through beard and braid as he crushes Thorin to him in abandon.

He does not die. Thorin buries himself again and again in Thranduil’s body, and each stroke is as smooth and sweet as the first, and Thranduil breathes in long trembling sighs and takes everything he is given, and _does not die_.

Sauron takes so long to understand what is happening that Thorin can only guess he does not believe the evidence of his eyes. The elves take only a few moments less, as most of them seem to be averting their eyes, to afford their king the dignity Sauron seeks to deny him. Indeed, by the time the first ripples of disbelief reach across the water, Thranduil is rocking up into him with desperate abandon, kissing Thorin’s brow, grasping his shoulders and groaning with frantic need. Thorin, for his part, gives himself over to the compulsion, laughing dark in his heart, inebriated with the hope of even this small victory.

All Middle-Earth is arrayed against them, ready to exploit or sacrifice them for greed or greater good. It does not matter. Thranduil stiffens under Thorin’s ministrations and moans in the extremity of pleasure, and before the flutter of his release has subsided Thorin spends inside him— _inside him_ —with such toppling ecstasy that even Sauron’s cry of rage seems distant and of little concern.

Before he can recover, before his hands have had their fill of Thranduil’s shivering skin and the tremors of his aftershocks, Thorin feels the spike of Sauron’s compulsion shift. He means to imbue Thorin with a spirit of murder, to break Thranduil’s neck before the damage is done; but Thorin has never desired such a thing, even with the greed of the ring, and he can feel the new compulsion slipping like water-drops across hot tar. Duty still lies heavy on his shoulders; Sauron still owns him, and Thorin knows it well, but for the moment he may defy, while his master's attention is scattered.

It takes the arms of orcs to pull him from his lover’s cradling arms; and already arrows are falling among them. Fierce ululating cries resound from the elves on the far bank: “A love-match! A love-match! A true alliance!” 

The orcs crouch low and cover their heads and necks as if they can protect themselves, but no few of them fall before they reach the wargs, dragging Thorin and Thranduil with them as they go.

For Sauron’s part, he mounts his white horse in silence and thunders away, leaving them all to choke on the ash he stirs up. Arrows whirr about them as they retreat, Thranduil still naked and struggling in the clutches of an orc protector and pulling cruelly at the hair of the warg that carries him, Thorin reeling from the landslides of rage that Sauron is spilling through the bond.

But Thranduil lives, and a spark of hope whispers into a flame in Thorin’s breast, even as great gouts of blackbirds spill upward from the trees behind them, even as the armies of Erebor and Mirkwood pursue them back to the jagged black palustrades of Dol Goldur where Thorin’s master is drawing them all in his wrath.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

The sheer black glass-studded eastern wall of Dol Goldur looms ahead of them, but their lead is not long enough to dally. Already Thorin through his master can sense the movement of the dwarven ring on Kili’s finger—they are crossing downstream, at a ford only a few hundred yards below, and all the army seems to be following them. None among the retreating horde are blind to the gouts of birds that spill up into the air behind.

The great gate looms before them, above them, creaking with the reverberation of feet and hooves and paws in the dust, and then they are safe inside the bailey with its formidable curved crenellations like fangs against the sky. Black oilcloth sails provide shade, where the sun-exhausted orcs can sob for air and gulp at the troughs; the heavy feet of trolls thunder above them, closing the gate against the army of Erebor.

How strange, to think of this as safety.

“Bring me the Nazgul that remain in the fortress,” calls Lord Sauron, “and have my mount cared for.” Orcish hands cluster and teem about them, stripping wargs and leading them away; the great white horse does not shy from the orcs’ hisses and laughter, though its nostrils flare wide and red. The metallic scent of readiness for war overcomes even the scent of orc-sweat and courtyard muck.

Thranduil himself is bound before he can even be pulled from his mount, and the orcs drag him away still naked but for tatters, still filthy with ash from lying on the ruined earth beneath Thorin’s body. Thorin starts after him, but there is a mental sensation like the jerking of a chain, like a leash snapping tight, and he stumbles. The Lord Sauron presses him with such mental force that he staggers and nearly falls to his knees, and the weight of it crushes the breath from his lungs.

 _I have not forgotten_ , whispers an unmistakable voice in his mind, _who it was that cost me my victory on the banks of the stream. I am above jealousy, as you perceive—_ and the force redoubles, until Thorin’s hands and feet go numb and his mouth gapes for air— _and yet I will not keep a tool that breaks in my hand._

The pressure eases, and Thorin despite his madness is too beaten to move; his breath comes in wet gasps and painful black threads flicker in his recovering vision. “You promised,” he says aloud, though the sound is lost entirely in the clamor of orcs preparing for battle, the almighty peal of the gates as they meet and clash and settle.

 _I did; and I think it is high time I keep my promises,_ muses Lord Sauron in his mind. Aloud he calls: “Bilbo! Attend me!”

Bilbo scurries up from somewhere, pulling at his armor-straps with absent hands, tightening the buckles: the boiled wool and steel of the Mouth’s ceremonial armor has gone, and Bilbo is cladding himself in splinted black with gray-steel studs in the shapes of dragons’ heads. It fits him rather better, and Thorin remembers that Bilbo is a treasured servant of his master, a recipient of gifts.

“At your service, illustrious lord,” says Bilbo, only slightly out of breath, only faintly bitter in the edges of his voice.

Sauron looks down at him, and Bilbo meets his eyes, and Thorin—still gasping, still raw and throbbing in his mind—realizes the strength of spirit Bilbo must possess, for their master’s brow to tense and then relax as he attempts to read the hobbit’s intents. How has Bilbo concealed his murderous plans? Are hobbits truly made of such stern stuff?

“Have your lads take the elf to Thorin’s quarters,” Sauron says, “and stay there with him, and keep him… amused, until Thorin joins him.” The words are so benign, and the shadow they cast is so malicious, that even in his reeling state Thorin understands that some terrible thing is meant to occur.

“Of course, my lord,” bobs Bilbo, and rushes away shouting at his orcs, and a moment later they are all gone, leaving Thorin still frozen in his master’s grip.

He hears Bilbo’s voice rise as Thranduil is dragged away, as the orc-captors are swarming him into the gate of the great tower-keep where Thorin’s rooms are. “No more special treatment, lads,” he says cheerfully, “my lord will want him taken apart, you understand, a bit of sport—”

The great metal door clangs closed behind them, and Thorin grits his teeth against the compulsion, struggles to keep the horror of Thranduil’s fate as Sauron’s will pushes it to the corners of his mind, scarcely noticing the wash of fear as his master’s most precious servants—the Nazgul—arrive.

Most are away on expeditions of diplomacy, or hunting, or managing the siege of Gondor. Two remain, tall and thin, deceptively ragged but gleaming with the treasures of ages beneath their black bandages; their faces are austere and lovely as sculpted masks, one bronze and the other milk, but their hands are withered, as if their lord began to restore them and was forced to leave off below the throat. With them moves the nauseating black fear that is their most potent weapon, though it is given to the servants of Sauron to resist it, and none of them flay the heart as powerfully as the Witch-king’s awful presence.

The Witch-king himself raises his hand in silence before his master, palm outward; the others flank him in kind, and Sauron looks down at their strange salute and nods. A moment later, the meaning of this becomes clear—to Thorin, at least, for to the eye Sauron seems to be stock-still, holding out his own hand in benediction and gazing into the middle space with serene impassivity.

To Thorin, who feels the backlash of each extension of Sauron’s might, the rings on their fingers blaze like torches, and the combined power of them is a door, a cascade of fire that draws the mind inevitably to a distant place. Sauron’s voice thunders dimly in Thorin’s mind, and he feels himself caught up in that call, torn away from his body for a moment and invested by his master’s power into some corner of another Nazgul mind.

Lord Sauron is seeing now through the eyes of one of his servants, aided by the witchery of his other Nazgul. Thorin is no master of sorcery, but his mind is dragged along with the force of Sauron’s purpose, and all the world is visible in the corners of Thorin’s eyes as a whispering wind-torn simmering ruin.

Like a vision, the world dissolves into a torrent of meaning and symbol, and Thorin is swept along helplessly in his master’s wake, furlongs away from his mere mortal body. On the distant end of the river of fire, through the window of the distant Nazgul’s gaze, stands a tall pale furious shape, a shape like a slash in the boiling sky, with golden hair swirling about it. Here in the dissolving world of wraiths, the will of Captain Eowyn burns far beyond her mere body, and Thorin wonders how Sauron came to master her in the first place.

“I summon you to battle,” says Sauron without preamble, his voice overwhelming the Nazgul hiss. “Erebor and the last of the elves assail my gate; I will send out a sortie, and you will drive the attackers to their death against my forces and my walls, then press through to the gate to recover.”

Captain Eowyn’s hair whips about her in some unseen storm. The light of her eyes is cold and fell. “Great risk awaits us at your command,” she says. “What reward will you give me, if I break your foes?”

A moment of silence unfurls, shock and threat and amusement. “What reward do you ask,” queries Sauron, and Thorin feels through the bond of the ring that he is delighted, that he admires this ferocity and avarice, that he perceives a tool for his use in her thin grim expression.

“You know what favor I will ask,” says Eowyn. “I know my kinsmen are not dying of any mortal disease. I know also that you will refuse, for with their lives you hold all Rohan in your grasp.” Sorrow and resignation lick at Thorin’s senses, seep like silt through the river of fire. “So I will ask you instead for my uncle’s steed, great Shadowfax, which you took from him as tribute.”

Sauron laughs and lets his head fall back with delight. “Ah, lady, you are a canny creature,” he says, and sighs. “The horse is yours, if you press through to the gate of Dol Goldur and take him. And I will forgive, this time, your impertinence—for I am a benevolent master, but I _am_ your master.” With this he breaks the channel, and the burning torrent rolls away, and Thorin is back in his body and so disoriented he can hardly stand. So Sauron has kept a Nazgul with Eowyn—how better to ensure her obedience, and the safety of his borders?

“A sortie,” murmurs the Witch-king. “My lord, our breeding-pits are heavily taxed with mining and forging; we have perhaps a thousand war-orcs, and those poorly outfitted. We are not ready for a full battle, not for another three years yet; and shall we pour out what little we have to be broken in combat? Why not have your servant Bilbo call up his worm and bathe them all in fire?”

“Not for nothing have the oldest dragons hidden themselves away on stolen hoards,” says Sauron. “Mirkwood’s archers are keen of eye, and I will not risk losing the old lizard before I come against the walls of Gondor itself; and at any rate, elves and dwarves disappear easily enough in the forest. Shall I burn my remaining timber to catch a few vermin?”

“Let them break themselves against the eastern wall,” suggests another of the Nazgul, voice rattling half-finished in its delicately shaped throat. “We are situated well; all other approaches to our fortress rise from the plain into sheer cliffs, and they must either scale bare stone or march up to our faces. They can hardly breach the black gate itself, can they?”

Thorin’s voice rises from his throat unbidden. “Dwarves are siege-masters,” he calls out, “and mighty delvers, and their skill in sapping is unmatched. The stone is sheer, but if there is one weak place in it, dwarves will find it. Let them come to the foundations of the wall, and they will be under it before the night is through.”

He had not meant to speak. The loss of control nauseates him, and reminds him that his body and mind are not his own. The compulsion of servitude lingers upon him like a heel grinding into his neck.

And yet Sauron nods to him, though his expression is cold—the first indication of anything but wrath since the disaster on the stream-bank. Thorin permits himself an ember of hope, though the part of himself that still clamors for Thranduil is growing numb under the compulsion of silence. “We must keep them from the wall itself,” Sauron says, “and we cannot allow them to establish a proper siege camp. Rohan is near, and will reach us by sunset, and with luck they will not be troubled by the waning light across the mountains.”

“By which time our troops will be in gobbets across the field,” insists the other Nazgul, whose voice is almost sweet within the bone-screeching dissonance. Thorin wants to strike the thing; how dare it defy, how dare it stoke his master’s rage? That anger is terrible, and if spilled will surely destroy whatever thing has invoked it—and Thorin is under his master’s wrath, and Thranduil’s life already hangs upon a thread.

“We have weapons beyond mere swords,” scoffs Sauron. “Or have you forgotten? You carry with you the power to freeze a dwarf’s heart in his breast, or to break the courage of any but the most stalwart of elves.”

All three fall silent. Thorin prays that they will hold their tongues. But at last the Witch-king speaks: “You cannot mean to send us out with the army,” he says, carefully. “To hold the wall against all their army for hours, in hopes of rescue by a girl and her horses? We are not as mighty as you, dread lord; we may be unbodied, if we are direly wounded.”

“And if you are,” retorts Sauron in a deceptively soothing tone, “then perhaps I will take your ring and put it upon the lady’s finger instead, as a reward much more binding than a horse. Your sisters among the Nine will no doubt welcome the balance—and I will be well rid of your backbiting, scheming, undermining _filth_.” By the end he is shouting, and the buzzing pressure of his wrath is like a nest of hornets in Thorin’s mind.

“At any rate,” Sauron continues, regaining his poise, “you, Tar-Angmar, will linger at my side. I shall have need of your arcane skill.”

The Nazgul closest to Thorin bows its head deeply. “May we not assist you,” it whispers, stone grating on stone, “and he lead your army? He bears a prophecy of great power, does he not?”

“On this battlefield,” says Sauron, “I see a force of hundreds, and among them not a single Man. Ponder this, and go! Your fear-spell will protect you, and my voice will be upon you, and you need not imagine that Eowyn will delay, not with your sister at her side. Now gather your forces and defend our fortress, while I regain my strength for the battle to come, and focus my thought upon you.”

He claps his hands, and the Nazgul turn reluctantly aside. Then his eyes fall upon Thorin, and hope dies in Thorin’s breast: Sauron’s eyes are menacing, dark, filled with hate.

“Go,” he spits, his voice heavy with compulsion. “Either aid my servants on the field of battle, or cast yourself from the watch-tower by the gate; it makes no matter to me.”

With these words he turns, flanked by the Witch-king, strides through the bailey-yard and disappears into a great dark door.

Thorin is left in the churned earth of the yard, alone with hundreds of shouting orcs.

The compulsion settles into him, lingers upon him, and he finds himself unable to follow, unable to walk deeper into the fortress, unable to retreat to the shadows of the jagged spires where his chambers—and Thranduil—must be. He longs for his lover, with unbearably distant dullness; his body will not obey, and his mind slowly begins to splinter, torn between the orders of his master and the need to rescue Thranduil from his fate.

And yet—the battle calls to him. With a groan he turns himself to the task at hand. He tries to press through the orcs at first, reaching for the armor-racks, hope mounting in his breast: surely if he distinguishes himself on the battlefield, his master will find him useful, will grant him Thranduil’s life?

A shove nearly sends him sprawling, and he looks up from the press of orc-soldiers and sees one of the lovely Nazgul faces looking impassively down at him. “No arms for treacherous dwarves,” the bronze-faced thing—male? female? irrelevant?—hisses, and with an inclination of its head Thorin finds himself snatched up by great arms and carried to the stairs by the postern-gate, still clad in nothing but filthy rags and unarmed, and thrown against the paving-stones in disgrace.

The thing knows. It understands the compulsion—no doubt it, too, has borne the weight of Sauron’s implacable will. It knows, too, that Thorin has fallen from favor, and that the danger it now faces is in no small part Thorin’s fault. Even now, hip aching from impact and hands covered with mud, Thorin can feel the urge rising to take up whatever weapon comes to hand and rush out to be slaughtered.

The Nazgul is laughing. Its face is perfectly still and it makes no sound, and yet its mockery oozes about Thorin, thicker than the mud on his legs. It watches him while he brushes himself off, and finally calls out: “Will you try again? Or will you go out into the battle and dance a bit before you die and join your pretty pet?”

“Thranduil lives yet,” chokes out Thorin, because he cannot imagine otherwise, even with Sauron’s will preventing him from truly considering it.

The Nazgul only shrugs one shoulder, spitefully. “How long can an elf live while orcs tear at his flesh? They must be made of hardy stock indeed. Make no mistake, little dwarf, even now orcs are painting the walls of your chambers with his blood, and garlanding the place with his entrails. You are not the first lover to be punished this way.”

The cold of those words sinks to Thorin’s bones, as deadly as the cold he felt upon the mountaintop. “You lie,” he protests, but his voice is too dry to make a sound.

“I do not lie,” spits the Nazgul. “I _know._ ” The thing raises its ring, and its perfect terrible face bends just enough to allow a glimpse of emotion, a shadow of some ancient wrong done and never forgotten. “Now back into the fray with you, or out to meet your death. I have no more time for you.” And with a quick snap of its heels, the thing’s steed leaps away, and the Nazgul is gone.

Thorin wants to disbelieve the lie, to scream after the departing monster. Thranduil must be alive, and Thorin must rescue him—must ride out to battle, must obey his master and win his master’s favor, must convince Sauron of his willing service. He _must_ , or Sauron’s compulsion will break him as utterly as if he were dashed upon the stones below the tower—

If he cast himself from the watch-tower beside the gate. The compulsion, horribly, permits this: his master’s words leave him this possible fate, cruel and dishonorable as it is.

If Thranduil lives—

But he knows. He has seen the brutality of orcs, and heard Bilbo’s words, and the Nazgul has no reason to lie to him, not with Thorin so vulnerable and so thoroughly compelled. Thranduil is dead, or dying, and if Thorin survives this battle he will only return to see gnawed bones and tattered flesh.

He cannot possibly bear it. He cannot _survive_ the sight of it.

Better to die here. Better to die without ever seeing. He is, after all, hardly even a dwarf—a traitor to his kind, an exile from his nation, a servant of the greatest enemy of all Middle-Earth. No victory awaits him, only a bedchamber spattered with blood.

It is a strange relief to heed the whisper of this darkness. The weight of Sauron’s will upon his mind is easier, if he considers death, if he accepts that he is powerless.

And thus he mounts the wall itself, and lets the bitter high wind bite him through his clothing—the cold is delicious, and the shivering chill of his drying sweat a welcome relief—and comes to the edge of the battlements, where below him the fulfillment of compulsion and the lure of peace awaits.

And beyond that, the armies of Erebor and of Mirkwood arrange themselves.

They do not immediately advance. Thorin suspects, looking at the main force arrayed upon the ruined landscape, that a significant portion of the dwarves are held back, possibly as a flank to close in, probably assuming that Sauron’s army can be lured away from the wall and closed inward.

He hardly notices that he has assumed a king’s view of the field until he realizes that he is leaning against the battlements themselves, not to cast himself down, but to see the field more clearly. There, the dwarven crossbow ranks, three deep and leading the line of Erebor’s army, ready to drop back and reload in turn; stopping power at mid-range against infantry. Mirkwood’s archers wheel in long shallow ranks alongside, to the south of the army proper, ready with longbows, which Thorin has not encountered in open battle—shortbows are much better for picking single targets, and Silvan elves are known to prefer dart-and-hide tactics until the fighting comes to open knives.

The whispering lure of death recedes; the habit of kingship is strong, and as long as he does not think of—of what awaits him after, he finds that his numb fingers and his wind-blurred eyes are enough to keep his mind centered under the hammering of the compulsion. Thorin has been a tactician, if only moderately experienced, and he supposes this is a form of battle in itself, a concession to his master’s command. He can feel the tickling root of Sauron’s thought picking up the gentle threads of comprehension in his mind, and he can feel the call to self-destruction recede to a distant hum. He is serving his master, and he will live.

It feels like being robbed of choice yet again, and Thorin resents it, and the ground below him is a distant blur of ash and shorn grass and oblivion.

The bailey-yard just behind the gate fills with orcs at an alarming pace. Little goblin-bred cacklers, mighty great-orcs with lances and pikes, warg-riders and axe-bearers and wicked crawling archers—they fill the space to teeming, avoiding only the places where the sun pierces to the ground between the soot-metal towers. No shelter awaits them on the plain beyond the wall, and Thorin wonders how they can prevail under the killing sun, now well beyond midday and into the burning afternoon.

He wonders this for the space of a quarter-hour, while he clings to the battlement and feels himself torn between the lure of destruction and the terrible relief of service. Then, like the silence before a mighty wind, he feels the bend and dissolution of his vision, and knows that Sauron and the Witch-king are making an expenditure of power. The light dims, and the air seems to rush as before a storm; out upon the field, Thorin can see the wavering of the rank and file of dwarves as the warmth goes out of the air.

Clouds seem to coalesce from the very air about them, and are drawn to the tallest spire—the spire in which Thorin has attended his lord’s councils for so many days—in a vast spiral of power. Thorin’s loose long hair whips against his cheeks; he thinks he can hear a voice, his master’s voice, distant and fell, from the crest of the spire itself descending like a thunderbolt; then the light is buried in smoke and storm, and the shaft of light on the dirt of the bailey-yard is swallowed in shadow, and the orcs beat their arms on their chests and laugh and scream with the anticipation of victory.

Only then does the gate open. From his vantage-point at the forward tower, jaw tight and palms sweating where they bear his weight against the stone, Thorin can lean over and see the cave-trolls in their pens, hauling at chains; he can see the orcs pouring out from the gate and surging to their places beyond.

The Nazgul ride with them, before them, and stop still upon the plain, two basalt-black columns marking the boundary behind which the army assembles. Thorin can discern no formal rank and file within the army of Dol Goldur, but there seems to be a nebulous structure to it, a center-pinning of powerful shoulders surrounded by simmering smaller shapes, a cluster of wargs here and a distinct line of spider-limbed archers scrambling up the wall to perch on its outcroppings.

Beneath the awful sky, the plain looks even more hellish, ash and broken stumps between the eastern wall of the fortress and the ragged forest beyond. The dwarves are lighting torches, which fill their ranks with a glittering pattern of flames; the elves seem almost to glimmer in the false dusk, and Thorin thinks he can see the red hair of their captain stalking up and down the line of archers.

The gates grind to a close. The army is shut beyond. Slowly Erebor begins to advance, slowly; the Nazgul wait in place, and the orcs gnash and stomp and catcall. The few remaining orcs on the battlements jeer and shove at Thorin’s elbows. Just below his perch, a group of four pale-skinned cacklers are gripping the blocks of the wall itself, scrambling for outcroppings to serve as archer-nooks.

Before the banner-bearers of Erebor have closed half the space between the two armies, Mirkwood’s forces dissolve into a split—two-thirds of them behind the main line of dwarves, pushing forward until they seem to squeeze off a company of dwarven axemen into a shapeless cohort that trails back on the southern end, to Thorin’s right. Thorin recognizes the gambit: they will crush against the side of the orc lines once battle is joined, a close-at-hand flank meant to drive the army northward, at which point the rest of the army will attempt to push through on Thorin’s left and split the orcish line as it presses sideways instead of forward.

The other third of Mirkwood advances in a thin undulating line, and Thorin cranes forward until his palms slip against the stone, wondering—

The first cries go up from among the orcs, and Thorin realizes that the longbows are in play. The range of them is even greater than he had imagined; they are peppering the orcish army from a great distance, albeit without any real appearance of pattern or aim. Even this, Thorin reflects, speaks volumes for the skill of Mirkwood’s forces. Longbows send shafts for tremendous distances when fired straight ahead, but are hard to control, and must be taught from youth, and even then a heavy shield may halt their shafts. Thorin has never seen one triumphant in tournament.

Well. No harm if the orcs are pressed back, and keep the wall behind them; though if Erebor means to drive the orcs along it, they may find purchase, and it would be… a disaster, a defeat. The orcs are not organized enough to reform once split, and two smaller armies are easier to trample than one larger.

The wargs of Dol Goldur, now snarling in unformed chaos among the larger army, might be shifted; if they can fight in force, might break a flanking advance.

A threat, and a plan. Thorin can feel Sauron’s smile; the compulsion grinds his bones. Thorin grits his teeth, pounds the wall in frustration, and finally seizes the orc beside him and barks an order.

“Armor,” he shouts, “and an axe, and meet me at the postern-gate!”

The orc balks, and laughs at him. “Little _nagruk,_ ” it mocks him, and Thorin snarls at the creature and cuffs it above the ear, and the orc’s eyes go wide, its posture cringing. “Yes, lord,” the thing says, and dashes for the steps.

His hands shake for a moment, and Thorin remembers that even if he lacks Sauron’s favor at the moment, he is still the bearer of a ring. His throat is raw from the flux of power. He dares to hope, as he climbs down the steps to the postern-gate, that some virtue left in his ring will carry him on the battlefield.

He may very well die; but his master’s favor has left him, and somewhere in the fortress behind him Thranduil is… will soon be tortured, and if the battle turns against them Thorin will lose everything. The thought of Thranduil under the ministrations of orcs sustains him as he straps on his armor—better than common pitted steel, with an axe that hefts reasonably—and wrenches the postern-gate open.

All beyond is chaos. This close to the gate, arms-carriers and little fetchers dash about like cockroaches, screeching to one another; a handful of ells further, and the rear ranks of foot-soldiers are nervously chattering, or bashing their shields with their swords in shows of bravado. Had Thorin not seen the mess from above, he would be lost; but he presses forward, kicking and elbowing through the crush, until he reaches the bulk of the warg-riders, milling in a cluster.

He dares not approach the Nazgul. He doubts he could reach them now in time. The war-cries of dwarves are clearly audible now, the tongues of his kin, the names he once called upon in blood-wrath; they invoke in him nothing but desperation.

Beside him, there is a sound like a fist striking wood, and the weight of a falling orc nearly strikes Thorin’s shoulder as the creature slides from its warg-mount. A longbow shaft the width of Thorin’s thumb catches on Thorin’s armor in passing, jerking the orc’s head back and forth in a hideous wrench of meat and bone.

The warg rears, and Thorin unthinking catches its bridle, and he pauses for a moment—the longbow shafts are still falling about them like the first fat droplets of a thunderstorm, and the army moves with a surge like water sloshing in a tub, and Thorin feels the impact of recoil and knows the first crossbow bolts are finding their marks—and then he grits his teeth and swings himself up into the saddle with a roar.

From here, he can see the dwarves, braced at a distance, unleashing their barrage. The first line falls back and the second rolls forward, but they make no further advance, and Thorin shouts with frustration.

He feels, rather than sees, the Nazgul lifting their hands, bending their will. The fear comes over him like a wing-shadow, like a cloud over the moon, pressing at the protective boon of Sauron.

The effect on the dwarves is tremendous. Thorin sees more than half of the crossbowmen drop their weapons, and hears their groans and screams. “Yes,” he shouts, leaning forward, pushing his mount to press ahead for a better view. “Ah, yes,” he repeats, but his heart groans inside him, seeing the banner of Fili sway.

Thus relieved of bolt-rain, the first tide of orcs breaks loose, and they flow across the intervening earth like a filthy tide. Little gobblers run alongside and between the great pike-bearers, racing forward, as if borne like leaves upon the surge of fear-spell. The bowmen stagger backward, trying to hold to the plan, seeking to fall back into the infantry and assume the fourth and fifth ranks, but the fear is like a hammer and the infantry only jostle at their backs like frightened children hiding behind their mothers.

Surely they will break now, Thorin thinks. The dwarven line will be separated from itself on the first rush, and the southern half will bolt for what remains of the forest. He nearly misses the glint of light on a hundred specks above the charging orcs.

A heartbeat later the first orcs lose their footing. The sound of wood splitting flesh and striking earth overwhelms even the orcish screams. The whole heart of that charge staggers, falters, and breaks.

The longbows of Mirkwood are not meant to be aimed, Thorin realizes. The two-thirds company behind the dwarven infantry have loosed their strings, not aiming like their brethren but sending a rain of deadly shafts over the heads of the dwarves in a high arc. They soar and then fall, pummeling the charging enemy, creating a wall of death that swallows the charge and sends its survivors scrambling backward, out of the range of that blind arc.

Thorin has never seen anything like it. Hundreds of orcs lie groaning and screaming on the ash, pikes jutting from the bleeding heaps like tombstones. The smell of slaughter turns the cold wind to iron. All around Thorin rise the shrieks and keenings of Sauron’s army.

They cannot allow the elves to close in. The longbows will run out eventually, but who can tell the cost in black blood? And if the dwarves overcome the fear-spell and advance, how can the army resist, with such a storm of death above them, and with infantry ready to rout whatever hapless creatures raise their shields against the sky?

Now the dwarven axe-bearers at the southern end, the cohort divided from the main army to Thorin’s right hand, lift up an awful cry. Thorin stands on his stirrups and can just see them surging forward, screaming against the fear, rounding about at the end of the line and swallowing the one-third of Mirkwood in their advance. Thorin hardly thinks; he shouts, feels the rush of power in his voice, feels the sweet rage and thunder rise in his blood, and gouges his mount with his heels. Forward the charge; forward the other wargs, drawn by the echo of Sauron in his voice; leaping and snarling, the cavalry of Dol Goldur rides forward to meet the flank.

The warg’s shoulders bunch and release perhaps twelve times, and then Thorin is in the thick of it, axe falling and rising. He does not think about what heads he is hewing, about what kin and neighbors may lie bleeding in his path. It is so easy, to let Sauron’s will pour into him and control him, to imagine that he is only following orders. “Thranduil,” he screams, and around him the orcs pick up the cry, imagining (he supposes) that the word itself has some power, crushing the onslaught into the earth and closing on the rear line of Mirkwood bowmen with the name of the elvenking on their tongues.

Thorin’s mouth tastes of blood and filth. His limbs seem imbued with lightning and with horror all at once. He hears the screams of felled wargs about him, but the charge is unbroken, and elves fall to claws and teeth and axes at the center, and scatter at the sides.

Then the charge is complete, and Thorin is nearly shaking with the adrenaline in his veins as he shouts again: “Wheel—wheel about—close ranks— _charge!_ ”

Whatever was left of the flanking cohort of axe-dwarves, it simply dissolves as the wargs ride back across it. Thorin is shaking so badly he can hardly hold the reins, and is grateful simply to grip the pommel and lean into the stinking mane of the beast and gasp for breath.

All about him are dwarves, and the corpses of dwarves. The force was small, and relatively little of it butchered, but the advance is utterly broken, and Thorin sees in flashes the shattered bodies and screaming faces of the fallen. Cold sick horror roots in his heart. Has he done this, has he slain his own people, for the sake of an elf that—that may be dead already? Has he truly given himself to the monster Sauron, for nothing more than the scraps of his master’s favor, for nothing but the faint hope that Thranduil might live?

Mahal, mighty Maker, he sees his error, he feels his heart break in his breast. He should have thrown himself from the tower. Thranduil meant to die a hero, a savior, and now he lies screaming beneath the knives of orcs. Thranduil was willing to die for the chance that his people might live, and Thorin has slain his own subjects in cowardice and selfishness and shame.

The first orange wash of evening pierces the clouds as the wargs complete their return, and the army of orcs swallows them. He throws himself from the beast’s back and tries to push through the ranks, blindly groping ahead as he goes, thinking only of the postern-gate and the bailey-yard and the spires beyond. Perhaps he can overcome the compulsion; perhaps he can die at Thranduil’s side as an apology.

He nearly breaks through the rearward ranks before he feels the impact of hundreds of orcs pressing, screaming, shifting. The whole mass of the army wrenches as if struck from the side—from the north, from the direction the axe-charge was meant to drive them all _toward_.

An orc’s knee connects with Thorin’s thigh, nearly driving him to the ground, and Thorin feels the crush slide into a lateral retreat, but he strikes out with fists and elbows and breaches the rearward ranks in a gasping exhaustion. The postern gate beckons. He left it ajar, and no one has bothered to close it yet: what is a shoulder’s breadth of gap, with the army pressed against the wall?

Across the beaten earth, against the heavy steel, into the yard—the compulsion strikes him before he has reached the troughs. He staggers, falls to his hands and knees, vomits clear spittle and bile. He cannot—he _cannot_.

The screams from outside, the crash and pound of warfare, are deafening. Thorin staggers back to the steps and forces himself to climb, drives himself forward to the overhang from which he had surveyed the army only a few hours before (so long? It feels like moments). He looks, and his ribs seem to constrict about his lungs.

Had he not suspected another force? Had he been so distracted by the flanking axe-bearers that he mistook them for the only likely threat? True, the army of Dol Goldur has not been driven laterally along the wall; but where Thorin had expected the two-thirds of Mirkwood to advance and split the line, instead a company of dwarven axes and hammers has emerged from the ruins of the forest and struck the army broadside.

It is no truly fatal tactic; but the Nazgul themselves are driven back by the onslaught, and their fear-spell falters, and the rain of longbow shafts resumes. The tide turns, the flood is driven back upon itself, the power of Sauron transfers its focus to strengthen the Nazgul—

The setting sun cuts through the clouds entirely, washing away the abandoned sorcery of storm-calling. The shadow of Dol Goldur falls across the battlefield, sheltering the orcs, and Thorin watches the slaughter below turn to a gray blur in the welling darkness, and the forest beyond the field turn to amber in the light of those last rays.

A horn sounds, and the gold-rimed branches shiver, and a mighty shout rises from the juncture of broken trees and burned field. The shapes of tree-trunks shift and sag and become the round shoulders of horses and the sweat-soaked fall of gold hair.

Slow at first, then gaining speed, the two hundred horses of Rohan form ranks and begin their charge.

The dwarves and their elven allies, lost in the ferocity of their charge, clasp the army of Dol Goldur between their lines and crush it; Thorin sees the bronze-faced Nazgul rear up on his mount and lay about himself with a sword. And yet Rohan closes on them so swiftly that their single-minded focus is a trap in itself—in a matter of moments the horses are upon them, the dust envelops them, and all that Thorin can see within the churning of the battlefield is the flash of armor and the sleek sun-gilt pelts of horses as Rohan penetrates the dwarven ranks.

The dwarven line hardly resists at all. Rohan’s forces sweep through them like blood swirling into water. Only once the horsemen reach the thick of the battle, where dwarves and orcs are striving blade-to-blade, does Rohan check its rush and begin to truly fight.

Their tactics are… strange, and furiously swift; they plunge through the orc-armies wantonly, leaving the dwarven lines behind them, and close around the bronze-faced Nazgul for a moment before re-forming and pushing onward, through the other pincer of the dwarven army, toward the black walls. Their progress is so inexorable that it seems to Thorin that his nephews’ armies are hardly even fighting back.

“The gate,” cries Thorin hoarsely, “the gate! Open the gate for them!” His voice is drowned out by the screams and cackles of the other creatures about him, but the thought itself roars through the crowd, and Thorin nearly stumbles as the gate grinds to life beneath the stones of the wall upon which he stands.

The gate has hardly opened enough to allow two horses abreast before the Rohirrim reach it, but the bailey-yard fills with horseflesh in a matter of minutes nonetheless. The stench of horse-shit and blood and man-sweat fills the air.

Captain Eowyn herself stands in the stirrups of her great roan steed and pulls off her helmet. Her sweat-drenched hair falls down her back. She seems very ordinary like this, nothing like the image of will and fervor Thorin glimpsed in the river of fire, and yet her voice rings out with fell power: “Let the Lord of Dol Goldur come forth and receive his victory!”

Sauron is there in a moment, tall and compelling and beautiful in his darkness, with the Witch-king at his side. “Victory,” says Sauron, in a weary voice. “One of my servants has fallen upon the field, and my armies driven close to rout before you arrived, and all my plans placed at risk for your inability to guard my borders; such a victory you bring me! And yet, I suppose, I owe you a horse.” He gestures, and one of the orc-captains bobs his head and rushes away.

“I bring you more than a rescue at the moment of near defeat,” spits Eowyn, clearly feeling the slight. She spurs her steed forward, until she stands at the head of her barbaric horde, and  looks straight up at Sauron with bitter, fearless eyes. “I bring you also the remains of your fallen—” and here she tosses a black bundle to the earth, a smoking wad of heavy tattered silk with a black steel crown bound up in it—“and I demand a reward greater than a horse.”

An expression of bewilderment blinks across Sauron’s face. Thorin knows that fallen crown; it is the battered helm of the bronze-faced Nazgul, which the Rohirrim surrounded in battle. How has the creature come to die? Was it mortally wounded before the horsemen reached it?

Sauron’s focus has lain upon the battlefield throughout the whole foray, and Thorin’s doubt seems only to reinforce his master’s own, though Sauron himself merely points at the bundle and inclines his head. “Your reward lies within,” he says, avarice tinting his words; “a precious treasure indeed, a position at my right hand, and its token a ring.”

Eowyn’s horse steps nervously to the left, though she makes no perceptible movement. “I crave no ring,” she proclaims. “I have seen the joy and comfort that comes in your service, and the _honor_ of wearing your ring.” Thorin winces—has Sauron not kept a Nazgul at her side recently? Did he expect her to envy the terrifying thing? Perhaps if he had kept to human spies…

A great shout goes up from the battlements, where the orcs beside Thorin still gawk and point at the field below, but Thorin’s eyes are only for his master and for the strange human woman who dares to defy him. The noise about him is almost deafening, but Thorin hears Sauron’s voice echo clearly through mind and ears alike. “What more do you want, you impertinent child? Have I not offered you your pony?”

And despite the growing roar, the rising cries now turning to words—the words are in orcish and in Westron, and they are all _treachery_ —Thorin hears Eowyn’s answering hiss like a knife to the throat: “Give me back the men of my blood, filth, and the might of my uncle’s throne.”

“Treachery,” the Witch-king echoes, catching up the cry of the orcs, and Thorin looks behind himself at last. On the field below, the chaos of Rohan’s aftermath has begun to resolve, and Thorin realizes with a jolt that the dwarves and elves are as numerous as ever, and are picking off the bloody remainder of a decimated army of orcs.

The Rohirrim must have simply ridden through the ranks of Erebor without striking a single blow. Perhaps the dwarves expected as much, or perhaps they were simply taken by surprise as Thorin first assumed, but now he understands why they presented no resistance to the horsemen at all.

For, having swept through the untouched dwarven army, Rohan had unleashed all its destruction upon the army of Dol Goldur, had simply mowed it down and trampled it into the earth all unsuspecting, butchered the Nazgul upon its mount and seized up the withered remains of its corpse, and ridden forth once again to pierce the other half of the dwarven army without doing any violence to it.

The dwarven army which now reconvenes, which is marching toward the still-open black gate, which understands that its victory in the field is complete and which now sees a new opportunity for slaughter.

Thorin realizes that he is screaming for his kin, that his voice is tearing itself raw with victory-shouts. Below him, the black gate shudders again, struggling to close; behind him, the screams of orcs fill the courtyard. Eowyn and her men are consummate butchers, and a half-minute later the greater wallowing death-cries of cave-trolls announce that the gate will not be closed in time. Sauron shouts, a monstrous wordless cry, and Thorin’s mind nearly tears itself apart as bone-deep compulsions twist and pull away.

Sauron is marshalling his strength, and has none to spare, and freedom rushes into the aching gaps where Sauron’s will was rooted in Thorin’s mind. It feels like the first breath after near-drowning; it feels like cold water against burned flesh. Thorin chokes, staggers, crushes the heels of his hands against his eyes—

Thranduil. Mahal, Durin, ancestors and their beards—in all this he has forgotten Thranduil. Cold sick horror wells up in him, nearly paralyzing him, and yet he is nearly down to the slaughter-pit of the yard before he even comes to his senses properly.

Sauron is in full retreat. The Witch-king attends him, defending him with sword and knife, as the lord of Dol Goldur withdraws toward the main tower, which is at least defensible; behind them, the orc-captain returns, white horse in tow, gaping stupidly at all the blood, and is cut down by the young captain to die in the muck.

Swinging herself from the roan to her new snow-white mount, Eowyn offers up a war-cry to chill the blood, and her riders echo: “Forth Eorlingas!” The gate is overrun with dwarves, and the arrows of elven longbows begin to rain into the bailey-yard; the outer keep is lost, and Sauron hard-pressed to reach his own tower-keep for safety.

Thorin cares very little for all of this. Thranduil is within that tower-keep, and by now he may be dead, or on the brink of it. He staggers through the ankle-deep gore and the deeper mud, shouting the whole while, bent on reaching the tower-keep door before Sauron seals it against the foe.

Even as he struggles, slipping in blood and filth, to escape from his kin and their allies, he has only one thought: to find Thranduil and defend him, or die with him. Even as thirty great-orcs take up Sauron’s rear guard and Thorin is forced to plunge through the melee at risk of life and limb, the pain of guilt and terror strikes deeper than any offhand blow from an orc’s elbow as he pushes through, pursuing his master, buoyed by the ring that still binds him to Sauron’s service.

Even as the great door clangs closed behind him and glows red-hot at the seams, sealing itself into a single impenetrable slab—even as Sauron looks back at him with thunderous hatred only slightly tempered with shock that Thorin has followed him into siege at all—even as the Witch-king pierces him with a look of brittle loathing and a venomous hiss—Thorin can only think of Thranduil and how close, and how vulnerable, and how broken he may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry if this sucks a lot, it's my first battle scene and I am just generally shit at writing anything right now and THERE'S ONLY ONE CHAPTER LEFT I HOPE YOU GUYS ARE READY


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for yet ANOTHER cliffhanger, guys. I originally meant to finish the whole thing in a single huge chapter and post it, but the climactic action has required something like four total rewrites and you all deserve something better than silence. Although I don't know if this is exactly, you know, an uplifting thing to read. >.>

Even weakened by the effort of that last charge, Thorin staggers through the arched entry-hall toward the great staircase beyond which his chambers lie, while all the others gather themselves beneath the soaring vaults of shadow to bind their wounds. Behind him as he mounts the staircase, Sauron is cursing in tongues forgotten upon Middle-Earth for an age; the second Nazgul is still out in the battle, and Thorin can only assume the thing is doomed.

He does not care. Thranduil is so close—a few flights of steps away, a maze of passages and then the faint reassurance of his own chambers. Hours have passed since Thranduil was taken and the few window-slits show a haze of smoking twilight; a numb pulse is spreading in his chest, and still he has to know.

But as he reaches the upper landing with its guttering torches and its corrugated walls, cold fingers grip him by the hairs at the nape of his neck, jerking his head backward, and Thorin loses his footing and nearly falls back down the stairs. Fingernails dig into his skin, and a bitter mouth next to his ear hisses: “Look at the rabbit, running for his den! Have you no master to serve?”

Thorin wastes no words on defiance, twisting and fighting despite the sharp pain of his hair, but the Witch-king digs his fingernails in until sticky warmth oozes into Thorin’s hair, drop by drop. No surge of strength for him now; Sauron has no power to spare, and the Witch-king is by far the mightier. For all Thorin’s struggles, the Witch-king drags him back down the stairs to Sauron’s side, restraining him by his hair like an unruly child.

Before they reach the bottom of the stairs, Thorin loses his will to fight, overcome by the waves of Sauron’s fury, sickened with fear.

“Where is that little creature,” shouts Sauron as they approach. “Where is Bilbo?”

All present—orcs and Thorin and Witch-king alike—share an uneasy glance. “If your eye cannot see him,” the Witch-king suggests gingerly, “perhaps the elves have some new sorcery—”

“The elves have nothing but sad songs,” growls Sauron. “I have no energy to spare searching for my servants in the midst of a siege. Where is he?”

Thorin’s eyes dart back and forth in the flickering torch-shadows, seeking escape, but the ring is still on him and his master’s will is still a potent force, even without the compulsions. “He took Thranduil to my chambers,” he says, ignoring the tightening of the Witch-king’s fist in his hair. Then a desperate plan forms in his mind, and he adds: “I will go and fetch him, if you like.”

The Witch-king’s fingernails cut deep, but Sauron turns his furious, exhausted gaze on Thorin and nods. “Go,” he says, and the Witch-king drops Thorin with a vicious shake, and Thorin nearly falls in his haste to be gone.

In the dark and winding halls, under the grim twilight that seeps through the high window-slits, Thorin can hear the distant roar of armies through the walls; eventually a steady ringing _boom_ shudders through the steel and stone, a sign that the dwarves are indeed masters of siege-breaking. The floor outside his chambers is slick with some unthinkable substance, but he scarcely notices it as he wrenches the door open, already shouting Thranduil’s name.

In the darkness of his chambers—no fire is lit in the grate, and little light falls into the space—he casts about madly for any pale glimmering shape. His eyes are only just beginning to see dim outlines when the smell hits.

The stench of gore, like a slaughterhouse; the rancor of orcs, the iron taste of blood, the torn-gut foulness of an abattoir. A faint and steady drip ticks here and there, and under Thorin’s boot is a scrap of something with the slippery texture of gristle and the matted spring of hair.

Oh, Durin the Father. Oh merciful Mahal.

There is a sound from the bedroom, and he goes after it; his knees feel loose and wrong, and his hands prickle like numb flesh on the door-latch. Inside, the room is pitch-black—it is made to catch the sunrise, if any sun at all—and the floor less slippery, but the smell of orc-liquor is strong.

A revolting chuckle cuts through the darkness, a swift scratch, a brilliant flare, and a tiny phosphorous flame springs to life in Bilbo’s hand. It must be one of Sauron’s sorceries, but Thorin cares nothing for the danger or the curiosity of it.

“Where is he,” says Thorin, hoarse from the stench and the fear.

Bilbo shrugs, and the flame subsides for a moment; then he tosses the splinter of flame toward the fireplace, where it smolders upon ragged kindling. Rags and trinkets, the kinds of scraps with which an orc clan might decorate a prized captive. From where he sits upon the bed, ankles crossed as if resting back against a picnic-oak, a slow curl of smoke rises in the growing firelight, and a sweet smell joins the squalor: Bilbo is smoking.

“Where _is_ he,” repeats Thorin, advancing on the bed. “What have they done with him? Where did you put him?”

Bilbo takes a long draw from his pipe. “He is _quite_ valuable to me,” he begins, his tone admonishing.

“I don’t care,” begs Thorin. “Whatever I have—whatever you want. Give him to me.”

“He’s more valuable to me than anything you’ve got in your pockets,” Bilbo scoffs. “Do you think I’d let him go just for a bit of orc-sport? Really, Thorin, it’s like you don’t know me at all!”

Thorin’s ears are ringing. He does not dare to ask; but a moment later the fire catches in earnest, and he realizes that the smears of blood like broad brush-strokes, the placid drip and the poisonous stench, are all orc-blood, all black as ink and reeking.

Bilbo shrugs again, fussing with his pipe. “I might let you see him,” he says, “if I trusted you.”

“Trusted me?” Thorin steps forward, grips the bedframe with both hands, and tries to keep himself from falling. The room is swimming. “What could I possibly do to hurt you, when you have _him_?”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt that you mean me well,” smiles Bilbo, climbing down from the ticking and circling the bed to clasp Thorin on the arm. “But our master’s eye is on _you_ now, Thorin, and I’ve got my war.”

“I’ll carry your cursed witch-knife,” says Thorin; he does not flinch from Bilbo’s hand, though it is very warm and seems to burn his bicep where it lies. “I’ll fight the Steward of Gondor himself, if you like, I’ll go against Sauron with my bare fists—I don’t care. Let me see him—please—”

Bilbo strokes his arm, gently, his tapered fingertips a memory from another Age. “Stars and stones, how I loved you,” he says, rueful and distant. “But you had another flame in your heart, didn’t you? You always have had, but not for me.” His mad eyes are hollow for a moment with grief, with hope; then he shrugs again, and smiles, and thumps Thorin impertinently upon the shoulder. “No matter now! Water under the bridge! You’re wearing his ring, you thick-skulled ninny, how do you expect to lift a finger against him?”

Thorin’s hand feels like a memory rather than a piece of flesh, but it moves when he wills it, and he looks from palm to knuckles in growing fear. The ring is so heavy on his finger, and such a beautiful shackle.

“What do you want from me,” says Thorin, looking at the gilded spill of firelight over his ring.

“If I fail,” says Bilbo, so quietly in the dark that the fire nearly drowns him out, “will you guard him? He will be weak for a while, if my plan comes to nothing—stronger than anything, in time, but the world may come to ruin before then, and he will… he will need you, if he doesn’t have me.”

Thorin surprises himself with a bitter laugh. “How will you know that I’ve kept my word, if you’re a smear of ash on the floor? Why even plot, if there’s a chance of really hurting him?”

“What would _you_ risk, to protect your silly elf?” Bilbo’s voice is a gentle chide. “And anyway, I haven’t much of a choice, have I? You’ll protect him or not as you see fit; and you’ll see Thranduil, or not, as he chooses.” He lets go of Thorin’s arm and saunters toward the door, kicking at a bit of gore as he goes. “I’ve let a whole squadron tear itself apart fighting over who gets to eat him—quite a pricy pawn, and not one I care to risk on a lover’s spat.”

“ _Eat_ him,” repeats Thorin, in a tone that would have set a less mad creature than Bilbo scurrying.

“Oh, don’t you fret,” scoffs Bilbo. “It’s their way, you know. Did you think they liked him for his pretty hair? Anyway they’ve all got full bellies now—sorry about the mess—and I suspect I have an audience to attend. Sieges are so tiresome, especially when your lord is willing to hang himself to spite the rope, as it were.” The last words are called back from the closing door of Thorin’s chambers, and then Bilbo is gone.

Gone without telling Thorin what he most needs to know. Thorin rushes into the antechamber, to crane his neck around the doorframe in search of Bilbo, who has disappeared into the directionless echo of the black hallway. “Where is Thranduil,” he shouts after Bilbo’s departing footsteps, expecting nothing—and indeed, not so much as a chuckle echoes back through the hall.

But there is a sound behind him.

Thorin whirls, expecting orcs or worse, and for a moment he sees the long fall of white hair and the dark steel armor and thinks he has fallen prey to the Witch-king himself. His hand goes to an absent sword-belt.

“I thought you must be dead,” says Thranduil.

Thorin’s voice feels like a blade in his throat, like the first word will cut him until blood runs down his breast. Thranduil is wearing armor that must have been made for some ancient king—joined beautifully with all its rivets hidden, chained at the joints with ring as fine as silk, black steel with the anodized blue haze that Thorin has only seen on a few bits of truly old jewelry. Bilbo must have found it for him, Thorin thinks dumbly.

At Thranduil’s hip is the Witch-king’s blade, scabbarded only with a loose steel ring, testament to the use that Bilbo has preserved him for.

“I thought you were dead,” repeats Thranduil, his voice distant and measured, and then his face seems to break and he is upon Thorin in a single stride, his hands buried in Thorin’s hair, his fingers tilting Thorin’s head back to cradle him in protective ferocity, his mouth pressed to Thorin’s own.

For a single moment of bizarre panic, Thorin thinks of the exposed blade, of the danger of being cut—but Thranduil is no stranger to carrying a sword, and anyway the oak-scent of him and the whisper of his hair simply obliterates all other thought. His thumb rests against the curl of Thorin’s ear; his eyelashes flicker at the bridge of Thorin’s nose.

And before Thorin can even breathe out—the unspooling tension of his spine like a landslide, the explosive conversion of fear and nausea to gasping hope—Thranduil has let go of him and pushed past him, and is disappearing into the hallway after Bilbo.

Thorin manages to take two steps after him before he understands fully. Thranduil, with his eldritch knife and his borrowed armor, is going to his death. He can picture the whole thing: Bilbo urging from the shadows, Thranduil proud and despairing, Sauron laughing at the knife in his chest, and… blood.

It is not the blood that frightens him, not with the ring pulling at his mind. It is the thought of Thranduil, taken from him, _leaving_ him. How dare he? How _can_ he?

He catches up with Thranduil outside the great chamber with the glass wall, as the door is closing (no doubt Bilbo has gone through it a moment before), and as Thranduil grips the latch-bar of the door and heaves, Thorin catches him by the elbow and pulls him back.

The door is exceedingly heavy, and made of the same impregnable steel as the fire-sealed gate, and Thranduil’s arm is visibly strained with the effort of holding it back. He still turns to Thorin’s grip, and from his face Thorin can tell that he is angry.

Angry, with the cold desperation of the prisoner, which Thorin has seen on his face since the first days of his captivity, and which he once mistook for resignation. Angry, and red-rimmed, which Thorin has never seen on him before.

“Don’t,” warns Thorin. “Whatever Bilbo said—don’t you dare.”

Through the crack of the door Thorin can hear Bilbo’s voice, high and indistinct, and Sauron’s deep knell of rising wrath. “Call the dragon _now_ ,” commands Sauron, and Bilbo’s reply is placatory, almost condescending, though the words are not quite audible.

“I will do as I please,” says Thranduil. “As I _must_. Do you want to fight over this again? Could you not bear for us to part with a kiss, rather than with spiteful words?”

“We will not be parted at all,” insists Thorin, tightening his grip on Thranduil’s arm. “Hang the rest of them. Stay with me.”

Thranduil’s eyes drop, and for a moment Thorin thinks he is tempted; but his gaze is resting on Thorin’s hand, which is trembling against the jointed chain of Thranduil’s armor. He is looking at the ring. Beyond the door, Sauron shouts in wordless fury, and Bilbo’s voice rises until his words are finally audible: _he does not obey me now, however I call him._

“That thing is poisonous,” says Thranduil in measured tones. “Take it off.”

Thorin shudders at the suggestion. “I cannot,” he says.

“Take it off, and I will stay,” hisses Thranduil. “Take the thing off! How much has it cost us?”

He releases the door, which swings slowly further closed, and puts his hand over Thorin’s own—no, over Thorin’s finger. He means to take the ring. In the great chamber, there is a sound like metal striking flesh, the slide of armor across the floor, a cry of betrayal cut off in a cough of pain.

And here, in the dim threshold of the door, Thorin’s hand stings, and Thranduil’s lip is bleeding.

Thranduil’s face closes into a perfect mask. “I see,” he says; his voice is filled with distant unconcern. Then he pulls at the heavy door, turning his face from Thorin entirely, and disappears into the room beyond.

Of course Thorin goes after him, but the room itself is dim and heavy with smoke, and Sauron himself is a force of rage that draws the eye helplessly. Bilbo is still struggling upright in the center of the room, cradling one arm gingerly with the other, and orcs jeer and laugh around the perimeter—

There, against the far wall, is the glint of silver. Thranduil is making his way along the wall with uncanny smoothness, only visible because Thorin is looking for him. Even the mad jealousy of the ring, however, is not enough to spur Thorin across that open space, not with Sauron in full fury striding down the dais with the smoke of war blackening the huge windows behind him and billowing in through the broken panes to surround the lord of darkness in ash and falling sparks.

For the space of a breath, Thorin sees Sauron’s advance as the specter of death falling over Bilbo, as the forge opened to devour the blade. Then Sauron gathers himself; the smoke thickens, and through it Sauron’s eyes burn like coals, but the dread of death lessens and Thorin chokes on an ashy breath, the first he has dared draw since entering the room.

“I have no choice,” says Sauron, in a voice of doom. “I am spent, and my armies are crushed, and even my most faithful servants fail me. Call the Witch-king to attend me in his ceremony-chamber; I will unfetter the Balrog.”

Thorin has never heard the name, but the syllables make the air swim as Sauron speaks them, and ice-flecks stab down Thorin’s spine. Orc-cries of dismay spread throughout the room. Bilbo merely bows his head in exhaustion and pain.

This was his plan. This has been his plan all along. The sly little goblin-thing, he will have them all dead for his plan, and half Middle-Earth to boot. The… the thing Sauron means to unfetter, to summon, Thorin knows in his bones it will devour the whole earth if it cannot be controlled.

Sauron raises his hand to still the gabble of voices. “Get out,” he roars. “Surely we have no shortage of stones to drop from the windows! Get out, all of you, and make your enemies pay for their engines!”

Before he has finished speaking, the orcs are nearly trampling one another in their rush to escape the room. Thorin loses sight of Bilbo entirely, but the chaos covers his dash through the mass of orcs, and in a few desperate moments of shoving and clawing he reaches the far wall, where Thranduil was before and is nowhere now to be seen.

Ah. At the edge of the dais, in the thickening smoke, the glint of anodized metal. Thorin wants to run for him, to tackle him; but for Thranduil to be caught like this, with the naked witch-blade at his side, when Sauron thinks he is dead—

But Sauron does not return to his throne. “Stay here and die, or join your troops on the battlements, I do not care,” he says, pausing as he passes Bilbo. He looks down, the glowing angle of his gaze seeming like a beacon in the smoke, and Thorin sees his hand rest on the hobbit’s curls. “I should have left you the ring,” says Sauron, quietly rueful.

“I could not have served you more loyally,” says Bilbo, and Thorin suspects it is true, according to Bilbo’s broken mind. “More… _effectively_ perhaps, but my lord—”

Sauron leaves him before he can finish his sentence, and Bilbo falls silent in the smoke, staring after his departed master while Thranduil approaches him and Thorin, thumb rolling across the band of his ring, follows.

Before either of them can speak, Bilbo turns from his reverie to face them, and his face is bright and determined and confident. “That’s all right, then,” he says, all business and satisfaction, his shoulders squaring from the posture of defeat. “He’ll go summon the thing, and Thranduil here will put the knife in him, and we’ll have him down before breakfast. Lovely! Perfect! Come with me, Mr. Thranduil, we’re nearly done.”

“No,” says Thorin, tight with rage. “He goes with me. I’ll put that damned knife through your sniveling face before I let him die for your ridiculous scheme.”

“You may very well _try_ ,” scoffs Bilbo, and still cradling his arm, he hurries toward the door without even looking back to see who follows him. Thranduil watches his retreating back, then turns his cold face to Thorin with blank liquid eyes.

Then he follows Bilbo, hand on the pommel of the witch-knife. It does not take him many strides to catch up with the hobbit, who for all his speed and agility is no elvenking; but then it does not take Thorin much longer to catch up with them both, just inside the heavy door, and grasp Thranduil by the arm again.

“Let me go,” says Thranduil in even tones. Thorin has never seen him so distant, even in the earliest days of his memory, when the envoys of Mirkwood brought their tribute. There is a fleck of dried blood beneath the cream curve of his lip; no hint of injury remains. All Thorin’s anger has not left a lasting mark.

Thorin will not relinquish him, and Thranduil shakes his arm, trying to free himself. “Let me _go_ ,” he repeats, viciously, and Thorin grapples with him for balance, pulling him away from Bilbo, the two of them twisting in one another’s arms in a mockery of an embrace. Thranduil snarls at him, teeth bared and eyes alight, and if Thorin were not sick with rage he would have been staggered by the ferocity of it; instead he roars back and heaves his shoulders, nearly pulling Thranduil off his feet.

Except that Thranduil moves like a falling veil, and between the edge of his balance and the floor he simply flows in Thorin’s grasp until he is standing, upright, so close to Thorin that there is no room for rebalancing, his grip on Thorin’s arm powerful and wrenching. He shoves, and Thorin braces himself and nearly falls, knocked askew by the angle, only saving himself by catching a handful of Thranduil’s hair.

These sounds—the grunt Thranduil gives as Thorin’s weight pulls his head sideways, the harsh breath of anger and the crushing smack of a Thranduil’s mailed fist into Thorin’s ribs—Thorin has never heard them before. They are nothing like the sounds of companionship, of lovemaking. They are at war.

The flat slap of Bilbo’s foot against the flagstones jolts them out of it for a moment. “There’s no time,” he shouts, and with his fingers pressed to his teeth he gives a shrill whistle that seems to cut right through the stone. It is a sound of pure distress, at jarring odds with Bilbo’s calm and determined face.

Before Thorin can take another breath, a small cluster of orcs appears—as if orcs could stop Thorin from taking what is his due. He laughs at them; the sound is not quite sane and he knows it. “Send your orcs,” he shouts to Bilbo. “Send your whole army, what’s left of it!”

The orcs shift nervously, and Bilbo shakes his head at them, shoos them away with a motion of his hand. Thorin scarcely notices; with one hand still buried in Thranduil’s hair, the other gripping his arm, he is close enough to kiss, or to bite, his victim-prize. He pulls again, and feels fingers sinking into his beard from behind him, and then his face is wrenched so far to the side that his neck-bones pop in protest.

A breath falls across him, the scent of metal and bone, and with it comes a curtain of fear that nearly topples Thorin to his knees. He relinquishes Thranduil’s hair helplessly, and watches Thranduil stagger away from him, eyes blank and black with terror. “What is all this,” snarls the Witch-king, still holding Thorin by his ear-locks, looking between the three of them in rising wrath. “Bilbo? And the elf, still breathing?”

Then his eyes fall lower, and Thorin feels the malevolent shift of his spirit and the horror and rage that poison the fear-curse still further. “My knife,” the Witch-king breathes.

Thranduil crouches like a hare ready for flight. Bilbo grabs for Thranduil’s hand and calls out: “Thorin! He will kill your silly elf, if he catches him.” Then he shakes Thranduil’s arm and pulls him away, out the door, both of them escaping.

“My _knife_ ,” says the Witch-king, letting go Thorin’s beard and lurching toward the door. Thorin’s fist catches him beneath the breast-bone, unawares.

The Witch-king is not entirely a thing of flesh, but then Thorin is no bar-brawler with Man-fists that break. There is bone behind all the armor, and Thorin feels it crack, and the Witch-king staggers.

No trace of the fear is diminished. Thorin is soaked with cold sweat just with the effort of standing; his vision swims and threatens to darken. But he has fought the ring—he has fought the compulsion of Sauron himself—and though he was defeated each time, he knows now how much lesser is the power of the Witch-king’s fear.

He strikes again, and the Witch-king gasps, and a moment later there is a knife in the Witch-king’s thin white hand. Thorin knows better than this—has he not already borne the marks of a knife in recent memory?—but it is so hard to tell one fear from another, and the knife makes him think of Thranduil, racing into the darkness of this final stronghold with the Witch-king’s blade spelling death at his side.

So he throws himself headlong into the Witch-king’s belly, shoulder-first, turning as he goes so that they land side-by-side on the flags, with the Witch-king’s knife-arm outflung beneath Thorin’s crushing weight, useless. An ell behind his head, Thorin can hear the pommel of that knife rapping against the ground as the Witch-king scrambles to regain control of it.

Thorin’s dominant hand is not trapped in their tumbling slide. He has fought enough battles, great and small, to know that an enemy may be defeated by something as small as having one’s right fist free; and for this reason he does not hesitate, though the angle is wrong. He strikes the Witch-king in the throat, in the kidney, in the ribs, feeling cartilage and bone cracking.

A lesser opponent would be gasping now, spitting blood, choking for air. The Witch-king is something beyond all that.

Nor can Thorin hold him down for long. He kicks, strains, arches his back; but he is losing ground, and in a moment the Witch-king will have his long arm snaked from beneath them both, knife clutched in his long white fingers, and Thorin will feel the cold bite of that no-doubt-poisoned steel.

It takes him a second to realize that what he is hearing, the hollow pounding drumbeat, is not his own pulse rushing in his ears; nor is it still the engine-thud of siege. He knows he has heard it before—

The glass wall erupts. Like a frozen waterfall, the upper two-thirds of the wall collapses, a thousand shards raining across the dais; it is only by pure luck that no great blade of glass strikes Thorin or his assailant, both of whom lie stunned. The wall is simply gone, the smoke billowing thick into it above, and half of it sagging and dripping in molten ribbons.

Molten as if in a furnace of unspeakable proportions. Molten by heat that rolls over the both of them a second later, curling the ends of Thorin’s beard and stinging his eyes unbearably. Thorin understands a split second before the Witch-king does, and he seizes the moment of confusion and thrusts himself away, rolls, staggers to his feet, and sets for the door at a run.

The Witch-king is on his feet and chasing before the next crash, the next catastrophic sound. The tower shakes as if struck by a mountain; Thorin spares a glance behind him and sees nothing but the gilded wall of scale-hide, the glimmer of firelight on the ripples of ancient vast musculature and bone.

Smaug the Terrible is here. His back is turned, for the moment; his shoulders, pillars of bronze knotted to a lithe nightmarish spine of jagged teeth, tense deeply and relax. The smell of brimstone fills the air until even the smoke seems a relief against the stench of it. The great worm is breathing fire down onto the siege-engines below, gouts of flame that set the air trembling like the surface of a stream, like melting glass.

All of this to see in the space of a moment—Thorin sees the neck crane around, hears a voice whose power nearly knocks his feet from beneath him. “Bilbo,” calls the dragon. “Have they hurt you?”

Thorin’s breath comes in sobs; the air is so thick that every inhalation burns his throat. The shuddering flagstones beneath him make running almost impossible, but the great door is so close, and if anything can shield him from the ruin of flame…

His hands are flat on the cold mass of the door, his weight pressed against it, when the Witch-king catches him. Thorin does not see the knife, glancing over his shoulder for a split second, but then Smaug’s face comes into view and the cat-like glow of his eyes is a terror that makes the Witch-king himself seem petty and fragile.

A thin whistle resounds through the stone: Bilbo’s whistle, piercing and terrified. Smaug’s serpent-neck whips about, searching for the source, and he hisses again: “Bilbo!”

The Witch-king does not seem to realize the danger. “He’ll burn us,” shouts Thorin, though his throat is seared to soundlessness. His opponent is pulling rather than stabbing, trying to tear him away from the door, trying to fling him backward and take his escape—the door is incredibly heavy, and there is scarcely enough room for one person to fit at a time. Behind them, Smaug calls again: “Tar-Angmar! What have you done with Bilbo, you bloodthirsty fool?”

Thorin slides against the door, kicks out savagely, and manages to get halfway through the crack before he looks back one last time to see the infernal cavern of Smaug’s mouth open and the kindling of fire deep within. He screams fit to rip his throat out; he twists and writhes, though the Witch-king claws at him, and he gains the crack in the door and is nearly out—nearly free—

Long nails dig into his arm, holding his wrist aloft; the wall of flame turns the Witch-king into a shadow for a moment, and the only thing Thorin can see against the inferno is the liquid glow of his upraised ring.

Then there is nothing but fire.

His left hand, held fast in the Witch-king’s grasp, feels nothing but bone-deep cold. Above his wrist, the door lies against his arm, cold with enchantment against siege—his forearm sears and blisters, and then the curling flame recedes, and Thorin falls back with ringing ears and passes beyond thought for a time.

Pain brings him back. His forearm throbs as if flayed. He tries to scream; his voice is parched and he can hardly breathe, so he lets himself arch and twist against the floor, pounding his right fist on the flagstones. His left arm he curls to his chest, protecting it from the imagined flames that still seem to be devouring him. He does not dare look.

A cold wind is pouring through the crack in the door. Upon it is borne long graceful curls of ash, shreds of black cloth burned to deeper blackness, and a stench of burned hair. And upon the flagstones lies a small cooling glint of metal, flecked with char: the remains of Thorin’s ring.

Before he looks, he knows; but he looks anyway, and with the sight of the space where his hand should be, he feels the hum of darkness closing in again.


	21. Chapter 21

Awakening is better the second time. The pain is awful, but no worse than other burns Thorin has suffered at the forge, at least in the areas that still have sensation. Thorin wonders for a fleeting moment how the enchantment was done, how it might be borrowed to protect Erebor—then the pain flares and he remembers the lick of dragonfire curling around the jamb.

His wound needs to be wrapped, but Thorin is still in his armor, and it takes him so long to strip away the gauntlet from his left arm that he is out of breath and parched with thirst before the task is finished. The leather of the gauntlet and the enchantment of the door have, it seems, given him enough protection that the linen sleeve beneath is still whole; Thorin rips it at the shoulder and manages to bandage the burns around his wrist, around the… the place where his hand was, well enough.

Water. He needs water.

And he wants Thranduil.

There is something missing from that want. Thorin explores the feeling as if probing an aching tooth, and remembers—

The onslaught of memory is an endless horror. The ring’s numbing power is gone from him now, and the part of his mind where the compulsion was rooted is now a pounding vacant place behind his temples. The thought of possessing Thranduil is an irrelevancy; he only wants another chance to see him, and to apologize.

He finds water—another spring-outlet, pouring into a fountain-trough—and while he drinks from it he remembers the riverside, and the rush of water while he…. His mind shies away from it. He has been a monster. He remembers the impact of his palm against Thranduil’s mouth and the cold anger on Thranduil’s face and his insides wither with shame.

As for the thought of Thranduil throwing his life away on Bilbo’s mad scheme—the bitter possessiveness, the feeling of being cheated, which has been his companion since the ring was put on him… had he truly been more concerned with losing Thranduil than he had with the thought that Thranduil would die?

He had taken the ring not for the promise of keeping Thranduil for his own. He had taken it in return for Thranduil’s life. Has he not done unspeakable things, things to make Thranduil hate him and despise him and reject him, only for the sake of keeping Thranduil alive?

The absence of the ring, with its razor-edged jealousy, is sharp and echoing; but beneath it there is another, more unexpected silence. Thorin feels hollow and cold, and the occasional siege-quakes hardly seem to touch him, and even the pain of his burned arm recedes. He has forsaken his duty as king—had abdicated even before he was overthrown. And now, with the last possible moment of redemption at hand, he has fought tooth and nail—even to the loss of his soul—to escape that redemption, and to prevent Thranduil from seizing it.

Cowardice, he recognizes. Thranduil tried to tell him. They will both die; what better to die for, than the miniscule chance of saving the world?

And who is Thorin, to give Thranduil commands?

It occurs to him that there is, perhaps, one final chance to save Thranduil from the death that awaits him, and to fulfill Thorin’s obligation as a ruler. He is no longer wearing Sauron’s ring.

Tracking Bilbo and Thranduil is not easy, especially as the throb of burned skin becomes an insistent hammer against his mind. Bilbo was never one to leave footprints, especially on sooty slab. And there is no trail of silver hairs to follow this time.

But Thorin knows the way to the Witch-king’s ceremony chamber. He has rehearsed it in his nightmares. The tall black corridor with its beamed ceiling; the portcullis-door that opens onto the long external spiral of the staircase; even in the black smoke of warfare, with fireballs occasionally arcing through the night to pound the black steel of the tower like fists, Thorin’s feet know the dizzying climb. He tries not to think about needles.

It is still difficult for him to cross the final threshold into that familiar chamber. There are no implements of torture now, no braziers, hardly any light at all—but to Thorin, every visible inch of oily black stone and steel seems to resound with the echoes of his own screams. The tiny scars of burns on his skin ache.

The back wall, with all its reticulations of decorative metalwork buried in deep shadow, exposes a new thing: a door, which Thorin has not seen before, left open to the outer smoke and flickering siege-light. At first Thorin thinks his eyes, in the dimness, are deceiving him; but then there comes another light from beyond the door, a sickly white-green flare like one of the reactive metals used by dwarven alchemists, and in its sputtering shadow Thorin sees two huddled shapes just inside the door.

One of them is silver-haired.

The ache and twinge of memory dissipates instantly.  Thorin only remembers to be quiet because the two figures by the door are crouched in such dedicated stealth. He makes his way across the room slowly, carefully, placing each boot-sole with deliberation, cradling his burned arm to his chest as he goes.

There is a brief rustle of movement at the doorway, and Thorin is almost close enough to hear the exchange of words; then Bilbo is silhouetted for a moment in the sickly metallic glare, his small sly face looking backward, and he slips out over the threshold.

Thranduil seems to be girding himself up to follow, and Thorin throws caution to the wind and charges at him, grasps at him with his good arm, hisses: _no please, let me do it._

A moment later he realizes his error: Thranduil’s witch-knife is against Thorin’s side, pressing a deep gouge into the leather straps that fasten his armor, ready to pierce his flank. But Thranduil’s face is tightly controlled, and the knife does not bite. “What are you doing,” hisses Thranduil in response. “Are you here to betray us—” Then his eyes fall on the ruin of Thranduil’s left arm, and in the unearthly light Thorin sees his pupils dilate.

“The ring is gone,” says Thorin. Whatever else he wants to say is too enormous, too dangerous, to articulate just now. He feels the meaning of his words slipping away from him, here at the threshold of destruction.

Thranduil’s eyes fix on him, liquid as forest pools, and Thorin sees his head tilt. Then the crease between his brows furrows in comprehension.

And Thranduil smiles. Openly, wistfully, unabashedly, and Thorin wants to kiss him. Not a single mote of meaning has fallen unrecognized between them. Thorin’s heart seems to be crushed by his breastbone, and his lungs are too tight to admit the next breath.

“I have to go,” murmurs Thranduil, leaning close to Thorin’s ear. “Bilbo is waiting for me.” Thorin reaches for Thranduil, and catches his upper arm—not the possessive, controlling grip of earlier that night, but a gesture of pleading.

“I will do it,” says Thorin.

Thranduil shakes his head. “You are injured,” he says, and his fingertips trail across Thorin’s neck, a sensation that turns Thorin’s spine to burning wires.

“All the better,” insists Thorin. “You can pass from this place unharmed. Mirkwood will need you, if Sauron falls. Erebor has its kings.”

Another motion of Thranduil’s hand: the roll of his thumb across Thranduil’s earlobe, a moment of memorization, a last hope. “I will not leave you to die,” says Thranduil.

“I took the ring,” says Thorin. It feels like a confession. “I treated you as a thing to be possessed, long before I even knew the ring existed. I have been a monster, and I owe you more than my life.”

“And I knew the ring’s burden on you, and what you were before it, when its twin whispered to you under the mountain. Thorin, in all this broken world, what I most regret is your breaking. I chose this for your sake.”

Thorin’s voice is a small strangled thing. “I will not accept it. I do not deserve it.”

“Then choose it _with_ me,” says Thranduil. His eyes are still and calm. His fingers find a tentative resting place on the back of Thorin’s hand.

A moment’s reflex, and Thranduil’s hand is clasped in Thorin’s own. “We are both kings,” he admits, and in the sickly green darkness with his burned arm curled against his chest, he presses Thranduil’s fingers to his lips. Then the knuckles; then twisting Thranduil’s hand gently Thorin crushes his mouth against his lover’s wrist, then without breaking that contact he drags his beard along Thranduil’s hand to kiss him softly, urgently, in the palm of his hand.

“Bilbo should have signaled by now,” murmurs Thranduil. His voice is not quite shaking.

Thorin can only manage a whisper. “We’re the last chance,” he says against Thranduil’s palm.

Thranduil licks his lips, eyes still fixed on Thorin’s face, and nods. “One more kiss,” he says, and his stance shifts; his palm slides across Thorin’s cheek and his fingers follow the curve of Thorin’s ear in gentle haste, and Thorin scarcely has time to catch a breath before Thranduil’s mouth is sharp and soft and hungry against his own.

A moment, maybe two; scarcely time to recognize it as a kiss, nothing like enough time to express the things that are wordless and clamoring in Thorin’s heart. Thranduil’s lower lip is faintly dry against Thorin’s mouth, his upper lip rises in something like a gasp—then he pulls back, and his face is a mask again, and Thorin nods and follows him out through the door and into the poisonous glow of Sauron’s invocation.

Beyond the hidden door is a short step downward, no deeper than the thickness of the tower’s wall, and below that an open space of flat black stone with a spire-tip jutting skyward at the far end. It is only a few dozen steps from end to end, and to either side are two braziers, each sputtering green-white.

Thorin had, he realizes, expected more than this. There is no cauldron, no arcane scrawling, no living sacrifice. There is only the thin grim brazier-light, the rose-glow of siege fire rising from below, and the tall broad form of Sauron silhouetted against the sky, arms lifted and palms heavenward, chanting in his almighty voice.

A step below them is Bilbo, crouched in the shadow, nodding with the pace of Sauron’s syllables. “Nearly ready now,” he says in a bright conversational tone. Thorin and Thranduil both flinch from the unregulated volume, but Bilbo only laughs and waves a hand dismissively. “He’s laid the wards already,” Bilbo tells them. “He can’t hear a damn thing, or see much besides his own will-weaving for that matter.”

“Then the time is now,” observes Thorin, and starts forward, only to be stayed by Thranduil’s hand on his bicep.

He frowns in query, and Thranduil whispers—still not confident enough to chatter aloud like Bilbo— “He will know if you break the wards, and be warned. Bilbo will go first; Sauron trusts him.”

From where they stand, Sauron simply appears focused; no glimmering light, no veils of power, no sign of any protective magic. Thorin’s fingers itch to plant an axe-head in that spine. He whispers back to Thranduil: “This is Bilbo’s plan?”

“He has seen many of Sauron’s workings,” Thranduil replies, his voice rising a little. “He’ll break the wards when the spell has drained Sauron, distract him for us, and signal when he stands vulnerable.”

Suspicion gnaws in Thorin’s breast. Bilbo seems not to hear them whispering, or not to care; his face is fixed beatifically toward his master. “Or he’ll betray us, and sell us to his master for a scrap of goodwill.”

Thranduil’s face is serene, and Thorin remembers the poison of his own distrust, and the distance of spirit that is Thranduil’s last refuge in despair. “I trust him,” says Thranduil. “In this one thing, I trust him. Will you trust me?”

The choice is not easy. Thorin wars with himself, swallowing angry words.

Still. “How could you possibly have planned all this,” Thorin demands of Bilbo, “with the ring on your finger? How could you have even _thought_ treason against him?”

Bilbo replies with a condescending chuckle. “He meant to bend me to his will,” Bilbo explains cheerfully, “and instead I think he broke me.” Silence for a moment, and this time Thorin catches the infinitesimal shift in his expression, the division between the cheerfully insane little monster and this… whatever Thorin is looking at now, this sad-eyed thing he had assumed until now was an act.

“I think,” continues Bilbo after a moment, “that you faced something like this once, at the riverside. Did you feel yourself breaking? Did you feel love and hatred ripping you apart, and your mind tearing in two?”

Oh yes, Thorin remembers. When he recalls it, his eyes and temples still ache.

“Just so,” nods Bilbo, searching Thorin’s face for the memory. “You would have died, probably; dwarves can survive almost anything physical, but their minds are so… inflexible. Hobbits, on the other hand, well. Not half so good in a fight, but we have our strengths. We can bend quite a ways, before we break.”

“What are you saying,” murmurs Thorin. They have no time for this, surely. Sauron is still chanting, but now his syllables are short and chopped, like punctuation, like the closing of an argument.

“If you break,” reasons Bilbo, “you break in _halves_. But I broke in _two_.”

The ritual reaches a crescendo. Even as they watch, Sauron gestures at the horizon with a swift chopping gesture, and the force of his unleashed will washes over them both. Thorin’s hair swirls around him as if he has been suddenly immersed.

On the far horizon, a gout of flame-colored light arises, a beacon to the heavens. For a moment, Thorin senses some echo, some instinctive dread: whatever has been unleashed, it feels like the natural enemy of all dwarven-kind, the thing that lurks at the utter depths of every nightmare from which Thorin has ever awakened gasping.

Then the beacon sputters out, and a long curl of flame rises in its wake, only to be obscured by the smoke and haze from below. Sauron holds himself straight-spined with visible difficulty, watching the flame-licked darkness, gathering his strength like a soldier leaning upon his sword.

“He is exhausted,” whispers Bilbo. “He has suffered so much—loss, defeat, torment, humiliation—and now… now betrayal.” He sounds like a widower at the graveside. “Too much, too much.”

Firelight and shadow leave Bilbo’s expression naked in sharp relief. Thorin sees the softness in his eyes, the narrowing of regret, the tilting of his chin as if he means to turn aside from his path—

Then Bilbo shivers all over, just a little, and presses his finger to his lips, grinning at Thorin and Thranduil with detached delight, his whole face changed in its expression. “He’ll suffer no more,” he whispers. “Poor Bilbo will suffer for him, won’t we?” And with this he trots forward, a tiny flare of green light marking the crossing of his foot over the ward. Sauron turns sharply, breathing deep—he is clearly reeling from exhaustion, but though Bilbo approaches him as if meeting a gossip at the garden gate, the menace of his power still pours from him like smoke. The hair stands up on Thorin’s arms and prickles against the inside of his shirt.

“My lord,” pipes Bilbo. “My lord, I come to warn you—”

The bastard. The little fiend. Thorin starts forward and is only held back by Thranduil’s arm. “He means to sell us for his own skin,” Thorin hisses, but Thranduil shakes his head and motions for stillness, and Thorin grinds his jaw and remembers to trust.

“Speak,” replies Sauron. His voice is tired rather than thunderous. “There is little time.”

The foolishness, the danger of his position seems to finally catch up with Bilbo. He withers, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands; he edges to the side, stuttering, as if casually trying to look down at the siege below. “Ah—that is—spies, my lord, everywhere, spies in the—my goodness—”

Sauron turns to follow the hobbit with his gaze, his impatience making Thorin’s shoulders itch. “There is no time for stammering. _Speak!_ ”

Bilbo throws himself facedown on the flagstones; his voice rises to  a shriek. “Forgive me, my lord! Forgive me—it’s all—it’s all full of—”

“He’s cracked,” mutters Thorin. Thranduil draws in a deep breath beside him, and by the working of his fingers on the hilt of the knife, he seems to be at the fraying edge of tension. In the hideous light, Sauron’s hand is clearly visible, tightening into a fist, drawing back for a blow.

Between sobbed breaths, Bilbo’s voice rises in frantic repetition: _full of, full of..._ Thorin shakes his head. Whatever Bilbo’s secret knowledge, it is lost to madness. They will have to do without. Perhaps the Witch-king’s knife will serve them—perhaps Sauron is weak enough to be harmed—perhaps—

Thorin nearly misses the shift in Thranduil’s stance, but he feels the movement of the knife at his side, the way Thranduil’s hand resolves itself upon the hilt.

“For love,” murmurs Thranduil, and is gone.

His hair streams behind him like a comet’s tail, bone-white in the sickly flame. His face is turned away from Thorin, but his shoulders are squared and he holds the knife in one unflinching hand. In the space of a breath, Thorin understands that Thranduil’s farewell and all of Bilbo’s shrieking are composed of the same words, that this is at once the signal and the war cry.

_For love._

Too late. The shadow-shape of Thranduil, blue armor turned black by the foul light, moves like spilled oil. His long legs make a second’s work of the brief space, and he leaps—

The recurve of his body, drawn back to strike, does not last long enough to be poetry. Thranduil’s leap descends; Thorin staggers from his hiding place, good arm outstretched, and sees the contortion of mouth and the flash of teeth and the sweep of muscle driving the blade down.

Then Sauron turns.

The knife glances as Sauron’s forearm meets Thranduil’s breastbone. The tearing of metal, of gauntlet and breastplate alike, is audible even to Thorin’s ringing ears. Thranduil’s body is flung backward, scrapes where it lands against the slick black stone, and comes to rest against the pedestal of one brazier.

He convulses with coughing; his arm moves, weakly; then he is still. The knife skids away, nearly clipping Bilbo’s hand where he is beginning to collect himself at Sauron’s feet.

Sauron does not take his eyes from Thranduil’s body, but Thorin knows he too has been seen. The only sounds are of wind and the cheering army below, and Sauron’s rage seems to fill the air like a deafening silence.

Bilbo’s voice rises tremulously as he pulls himself to his feet. “My lord? My lord, I came to warn you!”

“Then warn me,” snarls Sauron, still poised to fend off another blow, turning his head at last to watch Thorin with a wariness that betrays his exhaustion—Thorin has never seen him unsettled at all for his own physical safety. He feels the pressure of Sauron’s will, and the shaking edges of it where it slips away from the place where the ring (where his hand) used to be.

Surely he will be dead by the time this breath is drawn. Surely by _this_ breath. Thorin knows what he faces, and the imminence of destruction is enough to keep his body thrumming like a plucked wire, enough that the sight of Thranduil’s sides still heaving is only scarcely a relief. Sauron has surely slain more mighty threats than a one-handed dwarf still staggering with pain.

And yet Thorin lives. Sauron’s eyes on him flinch for a moment, and in the distance Thorin sees a gout of volcanic flame on the horizon, and it occurs to him that Sauron’s will is still bent in great effort on a different task.

The Balrog. Sauron has freed it; he has not bound it. For the space of a heartbeat, Thorin marvels that there is any beast or creature left for Sauron to fear. Then he recalls the end of his own reign in Erebor, and how easily a king may be unseated by his lieutenants, and remembers that he only fell from power because he was distracted in the moment of vulnerability…

Bilbo’s hand closes on the knife, scraping the hilt against the stone, and Sauron’s head turns. Only for a moment; despite all his talk, Bilbo’s face is open and soft as he gazes at his lord, filled with protectiveness, the same Bilbo whose hand had rested on Thorin’s arm and whose reminiscence had been so rudely curtailed by… by the other Bilbo, the part of him who plotted against his master.

Bilbo has the knife, but Thorin has no ally in him now. Sauron sees it, and turns back to face his attackers, confident in Bilbo’s support.

“I have no time for this,” says Sauron. “A thing is free in the world now, son of Aule, the first glimpse of which would curdle your blood. I am the last thing on this earth, I think, which is capable of stopping it. Any blow you strike me will fail; even like this, I am angel-flesh, am I not? You will only buy the Balrog time to escape me before it can be bound. Give up your pitiful selfish revenge, Thorin, and let me save the world.”

His voice is pleading, vulnerable, reasonable. Thorin forces himself to remember that Sauron is the one whose sorcery has unleashed the Balrog to begin with.

A great demon bound to Sauron’s service would not be bound to peace.

His eyes flit to Thranduil, who is stirring, faintly groaning. Sauron follows his gaze. “Ah,” he says. “Your… lover. I know his line; he will not see reason.” He looks keenly at Thorin, weighing his options, calculating in the space of a moment whether Thorin can be brought to heel, then adds: “You may have him back, but only if you care to find his body.” With this, he strides to Thranduil’s side and lifts one foot to shove him, to send his body plummeting over the edge—

Before he can complete the motion, Thorin’s full weight strikes Sauron’s leg, and Sauron himself—angel, god-thing, master of Nazgul and orc—staggers from the force of that impact. He steps back hard, catching himself, and by the time he has regained his balance, Thorin is crouched ready between him and Thranduil, breathing hard.

The sheer audacity of it draws Sauron up short for a moment. The four of them make a bizarre tableau: Bilbo scuttling closer with his knife, Thranduil coughing and starting to sit upright, Thorin braced and shifting from foot to foot like a wrestler, and Sauron looming over them all, bending his will—

“Where is your ring,” says Sauron, looking at the absence of Thorin’s hand as if spotting a snake.

“With your Witch-king,” snarls Thorin. “You will not compel me again.”

Another beacon-flame on the horizon, and another close behind. The Balrog is escaping. The sound Sauron makes might be a laugh. “Freedom,” he says, “and the fate of the whole world, and you will waste it on a half-dead elf?”

“I will die how I please,” retorts Thorin, holding his stance. Behind him, Thranduil seems stunned, reeling; but his movements are still fluid, and Thorin knows this deception, and feels the tension and readiness of Thranduil’s limbs even without seeing them. On the horizon, the flames reach a violent crescendo and fall, ominously, into the smoldering dim.

“And more quickly than you deserve,” says Sauron, stripping off his gauntlet, pulling back his hand for an almighty blow.

Only a moment passes; but in the moment, Thorin glances to Bilbo, whose hand is weak on the knife, whose grip seems ready to fail, who is watching with taut and anguished eyes. Thorin might, if he leapt, abandon Thranduil to his fate, live a moment longer, seize the knife—he cannot imagine the coldness he would need to watch the blow fall and watch Thranduil die and still move with precision and skill.

A decision: to hold his position, and die with Thranduil, even perhaps to buy him another chance to escape—or to seize the knife, and let Thranduil take the blow, and gamble on the blade in Sauron’s back. Sauron’s scarred face is cold with anger, and behind him, Bilbo’s lips stretch across his teeth in an agony of indecision.

For love, Bilbo had said. Whatever that love means to him, in either aspect of his broken self, it is the driving force of his life, the decision-maker. Thorin understands: love demands that he stay with his lover, and love demands that he honor his lover’s wishes, and neither choice will save them both, and still love compels him to choose.

He crouches, and sees Bilbo relax, his face softening, his spirit bolstered by the recognition of self-sacrifice for love. _Of course you lost_ , Thorin can imagine him saying, _you chose to protect him when you should have served him; I served my beloved, and now he is king of the world._

The thought of it lends him strength as his crouch breaks into a leap, as Sauron’s fist falls and Thorin flies—

Thorin feels the rush of air as Sauron’s fist narrowly misses him, and the dread that washes over him like the heat of a fire, and the recoil of his own leap carrying him—not aside, toward the knife—but straight upward, into the descending weight of the Dark Lord himself, into one last hammer-blow with his own fist into the swallowing-point of Sauron’s throat.

Thranduil seizes the moment of delay and rolls to his feet, only to dive for the fallen knife. For the second time in as many minutes, Sauron is driven back for a moment, reeling, choking. Thorin falls nerveless to the ground, his remaining hand like ice from the dreadful contact, shaking and half-blinded.

Thorin’s hand must be broken. His fingers move, weakly, but a sliver of pain tells him that the palm-bone of his middle finger is in some way injured. It hardly matters. Sauron towers over him, already recovered, planting one foot in the center of Thorin’s breastbone and leaning into it just enough that Thorin can scarcely breathe.

“My Balrog is gone,” hisses Sauron, leaning over Thorin’s sprawled body. “Can you possibly _imagine_ what that means? Your world— your precious kingdom and all its rivals and all the wilderness between them, devoured in fire and blood?”

Thorin manages to gasp enough breath for a few words. “Lord… of ash,” he mocks, though he knows the sting of his words is lost in his own impending death.

Sauron sneers at him. “Do you think I want _trees_? Do you know how _far_ the stars are from us, and how much farther the dark things that are not stars, where even light is swallowed, where even the Valar may be held prisoner? Do you not understand why I need this filthy planet’s resources, and the service of creatures that can live on slime and carrion and still make fine machines? _Fuck_ your tiny planet, little dwarf. You may all fester and burn and choke, for all I care, but _not until I reach the Door of Night_.”

It makes not a lick of sense to Thorin. The stars are distant and beautiful and strange; they are nothing to imagine reaching for, like apples to be plucked from a tree. They are silent observers of dying enemy-lovers on mountaintops; they are disinterested abstracts far beyond the smoke of siege and battle. They will not even see his death here on the flagstones—

Sauron chokes. The pressure of his foot increases for a moment, then slips; his eyes lose their focus, and Sauron falls heavily, catching himself with one hand, half-kneeling and half-lying on the stone. The handle of a knife protrudes from his back.

Thranduil stands just beyond him, scratched across the face and dripping blood, his armor rent and his eyes wild as the storm. A few yards further, Bilbo is regaining his feet, nursing a wrenched wrist and white-faced as a ghost.

“I was wrong,” he says, low and mournful, horrified. “The plan was good. I should have protected you, my lord.”

To Thorin’s astonishment, Sauron laughs, and with the sound comes a torrent of something—not blood, something smoking-cold and black as dried gore—from his mouth, curling along the stones. “As if a mere Morgul-blade could kill me,” he says, and with a lurch he steadies himself, pulling himself up to an exhausted kneel. The knife falls from his back with a clatter, and beneath the cut his ashen skin is visible, whole and well as if recovering from a splinter.

“I should have protected you,” echoes Bilbo, and rushes forward to his master’s side, his eyes vulnerable and anxious, his hands clutching at his master’s hand and raising it to his mouth to kiss it.

To kiss it, small wry mouth unexpectedly tender, a tiny detail in the green and flickering dark. His lips part; his pointed teeth press flat against his master’s knuckle in a bitter prayer.

Then motion so sudden that Thorin hardly sees it. The clenched teeth snap open and closed; Bilbo’s jaw grinds, his neck wrenches, and Sauron’s wrist jerks. Bone parts from gristle and angel-flesh tears like mortal meat.

Thorin is close enough to see the look that passes between master and servant, the realization in which he has no share. Bilbo’s eyes are soft, compassionate, vulnerable; but his chin is smeared with ichor, its color obscured by the tint of green flame. A gobbet of flesh trails from his lips, which bear no hint of gloating or triumph, only determination and sorrow.

Sauron’s face is blank, a mask. “I thought you loved me,” he says.

The ruined digit slips from Bilbo’s gore-streaked mouth and falls to the ground unheeded. Gingerly he spits something—a gold thing, a bright thing, an enormous burning ring—into the palm of his hand. “But I do,” he says, earnest and sweet, and he smiles.

Then reality crumbles, twisting inward, all the air and light in the space pulled into the imploding ruin of Sauron’s body.

If the earlier rush of power were a windstorm, this moment is a thunderclap, a lightning-strike, an earthquake. Thorin and Thranduil alike are flung backward; the entire tower seems to tremble as if in a high wind, and the tremors only resound the harder as the blows of dwarven siege-engines rise to a catastrophic peak, then fall silent.

From below, within, the shrieks and bellows of hundreds of orcs arise, and are answered by the roar of dwarves and elves. Thorin coughs, struggles for breath, rolling his head back and forth in search of Thranduil. The back of his head seems to be gashed, and his blood is sticky on the stone, matting his hair.

No matter. The cries of orcs are like the howls of blizzard-wind. The clash of arms arises from open staircases, from balconies, from jagged filthy courtyards—even from the hall beyond the ceremonial chamber.

“They cannot have taken the whole tower yet,” says Thorin. His voice sounds tinny and distant. “The wall has only just now been breached.”

Thranduil’s voice is like a faint scratching in Thorin’s stunned ears, but the sound is as sweet to him as any running brook, calm and measured despite its obvious strain. “Orcs are creatures of clan and clique,” he observes, from somewhere an arm’s-reach beyond Thorin’s own hand. “Their master is… departed; there is no law to restrain them now.”

“Ah,” replies Thorin. He can think of nothing else to say; his head throbs and his eyes are as heavy as if he has been weeping. The ringing in his ears is slowly beginning to ebb, replaced by the sounds of orcish warfare. Though it makes him sick and dizzy, he manages to turn onto his side, to see Thranduil lying near him.

Thranduil’s face is smeared with blood from a deep cut over his brow; Thorin can see the first marks of red-purple bruises springing up across his collarbone and shoulder, where his priceless blue armor has been shattered like an earthen pot. The failing green-white light blends with the fire-haze in the clouds to make his skin look almost natural, although Thorin can tell that Thranduil is pale as ash. As he himself must also be.

Bilbo alone is unaffected. His mouth is a mess of crimson; his eyes are merry and mad as ever, clever and wicked; on the palm of his left hand, sheltered against his breast as if clutching a keepsake, is a plain golden ring.

“The orcs are coming,” calls Thorin, wincing at the hoarseness and the pain of his own voice. “Can you still command them?”

Bilbo only laughs. “It hardly matters now,” he chides them. “I have him! I have him here!” He raises his hand, admiring the ring; a moment of softness creeps into his eyes, and close behind it a dark furious presence—Sauron’s own presence, Thorin recognizes with horror—and then Bilbo laughs again, and the vulnerable aspect of himself vanishes, exiled to some internal place set aside for Sauron’s possession and keeping.

Then he vanishes.

Thorin struggles to maintain balance; the tower seems to shake beneath his feet with each drumbeat of siege engines or buckling girders or… or…

The rhythm is familiar, the furious intermittent wind unmistakable. With an almighty wrench of impact, Smaug himself comes to rest on the lip of stone, and the tower groans and sways alarmingly.

“Bilbo,” says Smaug, his ancient vast voice golden with relief. “Where are you? What have they done to you?”

“Never you mind, dear,” clucks Bilbo. His voice seems very close by, and is audible even above the roar of failing architecture and distant battle; there is a dark and potent timbre to it now. “It’s all over. I’ve done what I said I’d do.” Thorin manages, at last, to sit halfway upright; the voices of orcs are clearer now, coming closer. It occurs to him that he should find a weapon, that he should hide—if only the world would stop spinning with every small movement.

“A great victory for you,” croons Smaug, peering about in search of Bilbo while maintaining his balance with his wings. The ground-washing wind from them nearly puts Thorin back on the flagstones. Thranduil is there, leaning against him, steadying him; Thorin accepts him gratefully. Each wing-beat seems to rip the breath from his chest, and the small comfort of Thranduil’s shoulder against his own makes the effort of staying upright worthwhile.

“But your armies?” There is a hint of anxiety in Smaug’s voice, an urgency at odds with his reasonable tone. “Your kingdom? What have you gained, besides that little trinket? Will you enjoy your crown?”

“Oh, this old thing?” Bilbo chuckles. Sauron’s crown, dented and battered now, skids across the flagstones as if kicked. “I never wanted it! And neither did you, I suspect, you gold-lecher, you lover of shiny things.” A patter of footsteps, and Smaug’s attention snaps toward them. Another invisible kick, and the crown sails into empty space, where it spins into the darkness below.

“Lover of _many_ things,” muses Smaug, easing toward the place where Bilbo must be. “Some less shiny than others. Will you let me save you?”

“Save me,” scoffs Bilbo. “Why, where have I got left to go after this? Shall I crawl into some cave and scrabble for fish?”

Smaug cranes his neck low, and his gaze flits between Bilbo and Thorin. The weight of his regard, the glowing lamps of his eyes, remind Thorin of the loss of his hand, and his wrist throbs in a cruel reminder that the pain of his wound has only begun.

“Caves can be quite comfortable,” Smaug says, his tone neutral. “With the right company, and if one has no enemies to follow him. And I would be there with you.”

Bilbo is silent for a while, and Smaug waits for him. The heat rolling from the dragon’s skin warms Thorin even against the flagstones, a soothing warmth that restores a bit of Thorin’s strength even as it summons more awful memories of flame.

There is no sound, no thunderclap of revelation. Bilbo is suddenly standing a few feet from the place where the crown fell, chewing his lip.

“I did it for love,” he says at last. “For love of him. I gave up everything good in myself for love of him. The _me_ you loved—the _me_ that can love—I shut him away. I made him into a sheltering-place and a cage. That part of me is gone.”

Against Smaug’s enormous burnished form, Bilbo seems very small, but Smaug extends his long neck and lowers his head to regard Bilbo face-to-face as an equal. “Who are you,” he murmurs, “to tell me what I love?”

Bilbo will not meet his eyes. “I have nothing to give you! Better for me to simply disappear. The orcs will never find me, not with the Ring at my command.”

Smaug’s voice is a rumble so low it shakes Thorin’s bones. “Please, Bilbo.”

Bilbo clenches his fist around the brightness of the ring and keeps his eyes lowered. “The first man or elf or dwarf who sets eyes on me will know that I… I am not a _good_ thing. They’ll have my insides out before you know it, and then they’ll come after you. I’ve got to hide, old friend.”

A smile creeps into Smaug’s voice. “Only from men and elves and dwarves.”

Startled, Bilbo lifts his head, and his eyes meet Smaug’s own. “What do you mean?”

“Come with me,” coaxes Smaug. “Nobody will know where you’ve gone; nobody will think to hunt you. I know where we can be safe, as long as we leave no traces—and I can finish the job now, if you like.” He nods over Bilbo’s shoulder. His eyes are unnerving with their purpose. Thorin remembers dragon-fire, and feels his eyes dilate and his body alight with terror, and scrabbles backward helplessly, groping for Thranduil’s arm.

“Finish the job?” Bilbo cranes his neck around, sees Thorin and Thranduil in their panic, and shrugs. “Oh, they’re hardly a threat to us. They have bigger things to worry about. And at any rate,” he adds, tilting his head, “I think they are my friends.”

“You have strange friends,” observes Smaug, and his voice is gentler than Thorin has ever thought to hear it. “Then I can carry them down to safety, if you like. But only if you are willing to come with me.”

Bilbo hesitates. “Where would we go?”

Slowly, to Thorin, the whirling dizziness of each movement has begun to ebb, the dread of fire recedes. The possibility of safety seems unreal, an echo of a fairy-story.

Smaug rolls one scaled shoulder in mock indifference. “Gundabad is presently divided into tribes,” he offers, “but the roads and halls and delvings are intact. If someone took up residence there, someone with experience as a leader, someone with a dangerous ally…”

“We would soon have a stronghold to rival Moria,” finishes Bilbo.

With a noncommittal hum, Smaug extends one vast wing against the flagstones, offering his back to Bilbo. “Soon enough,” he reasons.

Bilbo hesitates for a moment; then he reaches out and rests the palm of his hand against the membrane and scale, and half his mouth curls helplessly. “You’re warm,” he says, and before Smaug can reply he clambers up the slope of Smaug’s wing and clings to his back, pressing his curling, gore-slicked hair against Smaug’s shoulders.

A distant sound like thunder; Smaug is chuckling, relieved despite his worry. “Quite,” he says, and his wings extend like stormclouds, his body unfurls like a banner, his mass blots out the burning sky like a landslide. There comes an awful wrench, a constricting weight, and Thorin finds himself falling into the sky, pressed on all sides by careful scale and talon, aloft in the grasp of the dragon again.

In the dim and dwindling light, he can only just see the streaming silver of Thranduil’s hair in Smaug’s other claw. The wind is turning cold and thin. Below him, the dying green flare of the braziers twinkles away into dimness, and with them Thorin’s consciousness is drowned and buried in the black.

 

* * *

 

 

Thorin has never been so cold. His bones seem like ice, and his eyes are too numb to fully open. He is lying in the mud, cold water oozing into the creases and seams of his ruined clothing, listening to the ebbing drumbeat of departing wings and the rising clamor of nearby shouts. And he is cold.

Hands, beards, rough voices. He must have lost consciousness again. They are pulling him from the mud, broad fingers and stout arms. Dwarves. A blanket. This time he feels the darkness coming.

The next time he awakens, he is shivering, but his awareness is sharper, more constant. Elves are nearby, arguing; he is on a wagon, he thinks, having just jolted to a stop against a stone, his shoulder pressing into something soft and his hip aching against something hard. He groans, and someone puts another blanket on him.

It is Thranduil. Thranduil is here, at his side, the muscle of his thigh yielding against Thorin’s shoulder. His grave quiet face looks drawn and preoccupied as he glances across Thorin’s body, then away.

“You have your prize,” some elf—the red-headed captain—is saying. “Be content with your fallen king, and let us have ours.”

“The king will be delighted to have his uncle back, I’m sure,” one of the dwarves says, “but his brother will have us flogged, if he hears that we let the elf go.”

The captain unsheathes her blade. “Then you may tell him that we took our king by force,” she suggests coolly. “If you like.”

There follows a brief deliberation, and groggily Thorin notes that the elves number at least a score, while the dwarves seem to form a much smaller group. At last, with much cursing and spitting, the dwarves open the wagon-end and beckon for Thranduil.

Thorin feels the shift as Thranduil collects himself to rise, and the hesitation as Thranduil crouches on the balls of his feet. “Stay with me,” Thorin pleads, though his voice is weak and shaking.

Thranduil’s palm rests, warm and steady, against Thorin’s chest. “I cannot,” he says. “You know what would happen to me.”

“I will protect you,” protests Thorin, but his breath barely supports the whisper, and the wagon rocks as Thranduil climbs down.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Thorin is recovered enough to eat more than broth, the infirmary tent feels like a prison. The clean bandages, the plain linens, the bitter tisanes that dull his pain—these are utter luxuries, and Thorin groans with pleasure over his first meal of bread and cheese. But when Thorin looks at his own body, he sees scars and hollows where he once saw thick muscle; and no one will tell him what fate is meant for him, nor let him venture from the dimness out into the light. He is under guard night and day, and when he awakens gasping and retching from some terrible dream of fire, his sentries eye him suspiciously while he struggles for breath in the closeness of the tent.

He hopes, if they are going to kill him, that they kill him soon.

He wonders if Thranduil thinks of him, or if he is glad to be free. He falls into dark furies, and curses Thranduil for leaving him, for not rescuing him; then he weeps, and confesses to the uncaring sentries that he knows it would have meant war, if the elves had taken him. He begs for news from outside, and for messages to be carried, and for a moment’s fucking privacy, all in vain.

Mostly he watches the lamplight flicker and smoke as the wick devours the oil and lets it burn, and is itself unburned.

At last there is a commotion outside his tent, and the sentries fling back the tent-flap, and a small group of dwarves crowds into the already tiny space.

One of them takes off his hood and shakes his long golden hair out over his shoulders; another, hobbling on wrist-crutches, is assisted by two others to a low carven seat.

Then they all—sentries, assistants, even the servant who had been folding fresh bandages—depart, and leave Thorin alone with his nephews.

Fili clears his throat and glances to his brother, and Kili nods in deference. Some tight furious thing has gone out of his face, Thorin sees, and he breaks the silence first.

“Have you kept the ring?”

Kili nods, startled, then catches himself. “I have,” he says. Thorin hears nothing in his voice but Kili—no madness, no darkness, no lust. “It is different now, since we threw down the tower. Still… still there, but different.”

Thorin nods, unable to speak through his relief and his regret. Different indeed. For a moment he remembers his own ring, lost in fire; then Fili speaks.

“I wanted to kill you,” Fili says. He, also, is changed; his voice is heavy with power and his face is grave. “You broke my brother; you broke my kingdom. Your perfidy, your selfishness, nearly cost me my inheritance. I have hated you as I never imagined hating anything before.

“And yet,” he continues, heaving a sigh, “when I saw you lying broken and burned, when I heard you raving and weeping like a madman… I could not. I remembered the wrongs I, too, committed, and I hated myself even more than I hated you. I stood over you while you slept, the day after they found you, with my dagger drawn; I could not do it.”

Silence falls in the tent, thick and choking as pitch-smoke. At last Fili finds his voice again.

“I could have you executed,” he says, “rather than doing the job myself. But after the battle… I find myself sick of fresh corpses. I am not yet two hundred, and tired of war. I want peace, uncle, _peace_. What has changed in me?”

Kili reaches out, wordless, and rests his broken hand on his brother’s shoulder, and Thorin sees how Fili’s shoulders lift and wishes that he, too, had someone to help him bear his burdens.

“Still,” Fili continues. “I cannot keep you here. My spite is gone, but uncle, the sight of your face—the memories you bring to me…” He coughs, and Thorin hears the tightness in his voice, the danger of breaking. “We should have loved each other,” says Fili finally. “We did, once. We should have been family in truth, as we were before the Quest. But we did not, and now… now there is no fixing it.”

“No,” says Thorin, not trusting his voice for more.

Fili nods, lips tight. “You are a traitor,” he says, with regal firmness, shifting in his seat and squaring his shoulders. “You are, unless I miss my guess, one of the greatest criminals in this war. I suspect, though I do not care to investigate, that you have shed dwarven blood, and aided our greatest enemy against us with our own state secrets.”

“I do not deny it,” says Thorin.

Fili sighs. “Grave crimes, subject to death. But I have already had you executed once.” The expression he makes is not quite a smile. “And you retook Erebor, when you were younger and wiser. For you, mercy. We exile you, Thorin Oakenshield. You are banished from our presence, and from dwarven lands, for as long as you live.”

Thorin nods, swallows, nods again. It is a generous sentence. The halls of Erebor seem as distant as a dream, and as momentary. “Where shall I go,” he says, feeling numb and bizarrely weightless.

“Anywhere that will have you,” Fili says. “South to Gondor, perhaps, or Rohan. Or west, to the foothills where the wild men live. I would not attempt the elves, if I were you, not… given your history with them.”

There can be no answer to this. Thorin averts his eyes.

“We will spare you a mount, and a ration of _cram_ ,” says Fili. He looks at Kili, who squeezes his shoulder with gnarled fingers. “You leave within the hour,” he says, and stands. “Goodbye, uncle.”

“Goodbye, Fili,” murmurs Thorin, as sentries and servants crowd back into the tent. “And goodbye to you as well, Kili. I am so sorry.”

“I do not forgive you, as I do not forgive myself,” says Kili. “But I wish you peace, as I wish myself peace. Go in good health, so long as you go.” Leaning upon his wrist-crutches, Kili makes his way from the tent, with his brother close at his side.

For a few minutes, Thorin sits in the dim lamplight, watching the line of cold winter dawnlight around the tent-flap, imagining a hundred other things he wants to say to them and hear from them. Then, with a sigh, he stands and nods to the sentries, and they throw open the canvas door.

 

* * *

 

 

The wind is shockingly cold, but the trees are now budded in earnest, and a few twisted branches are even blooming. Thorin, swaying astride his pony, hardly notices the edges of spring.

He had expected worse, leaving the camp. A traitor, a kinslayer, being run out of dwarvendom—in Erebor, there would have been rubbish thrown at him, spittle in his hair, jeering and spite still ringing in his ears.

Instead, silence. Faces turned away, conversations hushed. Even the guards who stood at the makeshift gates of the camp had pretended not to see him. Thorin’s knuckles whiten on the reins, remembering.

He is a ghost, now.

The road here is nearly a tunnel. Trees knit themselves together in oaken thatches, and the light that trickles through is tinted pale green by the new-leafing canopy. For a moment, Thorin lets himself imagine that the trunks receding into the gloom are pillars, that he is in one of his fathers’ many-vaulted halls.

Thranduil might have been here. Thorin tries to comfort himself with this thought, with the imagining that Thranduil’s entourage would have trodden this road, that perhaps the air he is breathing still carries some days-old whisper of Thranduil’s scent. Indeed, with each breath he tastes oak leaves and cold earth, but there is some other thing missing: some undefinable rain-scent, some skin-taste, which makes each breath a disappointment and fills his belly with stone.

He remembers this road. He and his Company once traveled it, hungry and fearful and determined. Somewhere within a league of here, stumbling in desperation through the forest, Thorin had parted ways with Bilbo; somewhere in these trees, perhaps, the bones of his kinfolk still rest in the soil like carrion.

Somewhere close by, Thorin had seen a flash of white, a stag—a lamp—a feast. He has recalled the memory a thousand times, in his decades of kingship, in the depths of his hate. Now the image is so clear that it almost seems a vision, and devoid of the loathing and greed that had imprisoned him for so many years. A light in the trees, a pang of regret. A flash of white.

He is already on foot, climbing over the roots and groping through the branches, before he realizes that he is not remembering. There is a flicker in the distance, a pale hint of movement, a lamp that cuts through the forest-dim; and he is already staggering through the leaf-mold, pony forgotten, calling Thranduil’s name.

Too late—the glimpse is gone. Thorin’s heart is pounding. He stands in ankle-deep moss, his hands scratched and smeared with earth, looking about himself frantically—

There. Another glimpse, in the other direction. “Thranduil,” he calls, and sets off in pursuit.

It does not take him long to tire. The infirmary tent, the battle, the weeks of torture: these things have taken their toll, and at last Thorin’s foot catches on a loam-bank and he sprawls headlong in the moss.

When he tries to roll over, groaning, he discovers a blade pressing against his back.

“A trespasser,” says Thranduil, his voice careful and neutral. “In my forest.”

Some unexpected sound tears itself from Thorin’s throat, a sob or a groan. “Thranduil,” he says, and heedless of the blade he rolls onto his back.

Perhaps twenty elves surround them, some leading pale gray horses with white forelocks, some nocking arrows, some merely looking to their king.

Their towering, graceful king, who seems taller than Thorin has ever imagined him. His hair falls over weighty silver robes; he is crowned with the bare blood-tinted switches of some early spring shrub, like fingertips turned red with the cold. There are white petals caught in his hair.

“Thorin,” he says, in a voice open and broken with delight and grief, and stretches out his hand to pull Thorin upright, and to embrace him.

 

* * *

 

 

The pony, Thorin supposes, will wander back along the road to the dwarven camp. He does not much care.

He rides before Thranduil on his gray palfrey, letting the elvenking bear the reins, simply resting and exulting in the warmth and the breath of his lover against his back. If he turns his head, he can hear Thranduil’s heart, slow and unfailing as the turn of seasons. If he shifts his weight, Thranduil’s arm shifts too, steadying him in a simple momentary embrace, exulting in the uncomplicated ease of touch.

Two days have passed, all in northwesterly travel, and in that time Thorin has eaten little but elven waybread, drunk little but clear water from Thranduil’s water-skin. He sleeps when sleep takes him; he awakens in the protective circle of Thranduil’s arms, to the warm scent of horses and forest-spring, and deep in his breast some untouchable hurt is healing.

The elves tend toward silence, and their joy and determination resonate in their breathing; occasionally they sing, and Thorin lets their rich unhurried voices soothe him, lets the sailing descant lift his heart. Thranduil speaks with him, low and lovely, from time to time.

Thorin wants to weep not for the beauty of his mouth and the words that fall from it, but for the quiet intimacy of simply conversing with him, and hearing his thoughts, and knowing that he may love, and is loved.

At midafternoon on the third day, they crest a low rise, and suddenly they are looking down from the edge of the forest itself. Here the trees swell to cover a mighty foothill, an outflung bastion of the mountains, but at the peak of it some ancient landslide has torn away the slope. Here the forest ends, and gives way to glacial footlands, where the hills are low and rolling, clustered here and there with creeping forest and tangled briar.

From this vantage, Thorin’s gaze is free to wander; the land retreats into blue haze in the far distance. To the south, the marshy land is rimed and ribboned with silver, the side-light of afternoon spring upon river and hummock alike, but shadowed by a storm pushing northward over the mountains from the sea. To the west, Thorin can glimpse the eaves of some other hallowed wood, whose trees seem to melt in each breeze into a canopy of silver.

Beyond that wood— _Lothlorien_ , the elves name it—the Misty Mountains are burning. Smoke rises from wildfires along their slopes, blackening the sky. “The Balrog,” murmurs Thranduil in his ear. “Free and rampaging. The Lady will hold him at bay for a time, now that she is beginning to reach beyond her borders again; but if we hope for peace, we will need to destroy the thing entirely. Look yonder,” he adds, and points to a notch in the endless saw of mountains.

“The High Pass,” says Thorin. His voice seems sweeter than it was before, rich with lack of use rather than rusted.

“Beyond it,” says Thranduil, “lies Imladris, where the Evenstar rules with her human consort and her brothers. Little of great power remains in this world, since Elrond Half-Elven fled the Necromancer and went west to join his lady wife, and Galadriel will not expend her own power lightly; but in Imladris there is one who has faced a Balrog before, and been victorious.”

“Then we find him,” says Thorin, “and beg for his help?”

Thranduil smiles against his ear, and Thorin feels the pang of something sweeter and deeper and more painful than regret. His body is warm and steady and solid against Thorin’s back. “And we rest,” Thranduil replies, nudging his mount to turn and begin the descent.


	22. Chapter 22

The smoke lies thick over the mountains, and on the day they reach Imladris little is visible of the valley but its twinkling lights, even though sunset is an hour away. The envoy of Mirkwood winds its way down a stony path to a narrow, graceful bridge, and is met with wary welcome.

Thorin and Thranduil are seated within the hour before the Lady of the Dell, the Evenstar, in their worn and filthy travel clothing, telling her of battle and ruin and victory.  No ash darkens her luminous skin; her midnight hair falls like a veil around her. Beside her stands a mere lad, a human, a man of perhaps nineteen summers—though his face is grave and stern, and Thorin sees in his expression the swift and fell adulthood that was thrust upon him young. His hand rests upon her shoulder, seeking guidance, offering support.

He is so young. For a moment, Thorin’s mouth tightens with disapproval.

Then he remembers that Thranduil is thousands of years old, and that humans count their years very differently, and that when Elrond fled the Necromancer his daughter would have been terribly alone. And who has not, in these past dark awful days, made foolish decisions in the name of love?

As they finish their tale, a commotion arises in the hall, voices raised in urgency. A door slams; the drape across the southern entrance is flung back; there stands, frozen in shock, a slim and thin-mouthed elf with white-blond hair.

“Father,” he says, and Thranduil flies to him, embracing him, weeping openly into his hair.

* * *

Thranduil insists that Thorin sleep in his bed, in his chambers, the two of them alone. Pain-draughts offer Thorin relief from the rising tide of pain in his arm, but wrack him with fever-dreams and strange ideas, and he awakens shouting almost every night. His dreams are all needles and knives and Bilbo’s teeth.

Coming back to himself—to the open, breeze-filled room, to the ever-present scent of smoke countered by the scent of Thranduil’s skin, to the gentle weight of Thranduil himself awakening against his side—is like falling back into a dream. He lies listening to the pounding of his heart, weeping, and listens to the murmur of soft elvish songs against his ear.

They eat alone together, quiet in their chambers. The laughter and gaiety of the great hall is too much for Thorin now, while he is half-drugged and still wracked with memory and dread. It is enough, right now, that Thranduil combs his hair for him, that the silence is filled with small speech and easy glances. They sing for one another, humming old songs, sharing memories from times before pain.

It is easy to sing, here in the valley where even speech seems to take on its own music. It is easy to sleep.

If the skies are still dim at mid-day, if a thread of urgency fills each half-heard conversation… these things feel distant, impossible. Thorin walks in the gardens and flicks ash from the rose-petals and thinks of nothing but silver hair and mirrored eyes.

He learns things in the gardens, eavesdropping and making polite conversation. He comes to understand that his ring, Kili’s ring, and Sauron’s ring were all connected, and others besides; he suspects that this is why Elrond Half-Elven, once lord of Imladris, departed in such haste when Sauron rose to power, and why the Lady of Lorien so tightly sealed her borders.

He hears that the Lady Evenstar’s brothers have returned from their hunting, that delegates are arriving from as far as Gondor, that the old king of Rohan has recovered from his illness at last.  He hears that Erebor has two kings now. He hears that the fires on the mountainside must be keeping the orcs in their holes—since the fall of the Necromancer, it is whispered, only a few wild tribes of orcs have been spotted, and the goblins of Gundabad have retreated into their own kingdom.

Then Thranduil appears, tall and dim and silver under the evening smoke, graceful bare feet upon the garden path, to bring him back inside; and Thorin’s mind slips from the things he has learned, and finds its rest on the clasp of Thranduil’s fingers between his own.

* * *

In time, the pain eases, and the fog of elven pain-draughts begins to lift. Thorin has lost some of his strength, he knows, but the days pass and his gaze clears, and one day he is rummaging through the clothing-chest when he finds Thranduil’s sword.

He has never seen it so closely before. It certainly was not with Thranduil when Fili and Kili dragged him before Thorin’s throne. He supposes Legolas must have kept it, and brought it with him to this hidden place of safety.

The hilt is heavy in Thorin’s hand. There is a scroll of sweet white metal—silver—in the polished grip, and it warms to Thorin’s palm.

It slides so easily from the sheath. The balance is sublime; the blade is too long for Thorin’s height, and the heft could be more weighty. But the tendons in his hand remember, and the half-imagined hum of stroked metal—the _shing_ of the still-ringing drawn blade—is so sweet that even his fingerprints seem sharp-edged.

He breathes, and it feels like the first breath he has taken since Dol Goldur.

The sound of a footstep startles him from his reverie, and he turns, blade at the ready, to find Thranduil standing in the doorway. It takes a moment for Thorin to realize that he is wielding a sword in readiness only a few paces from his unarmed lover.

But Thranduil’s eyes are soft at first, then fierce and joyful.

“You are beautiful with a blade in your hand,” he says.

* * *

In time, they allow themselves to be lured to the great hall by the prospect of wine and song, and to linger for dinner afterward. The outbursts of raucous noise do not bother Thorin so much anymore, and the meat is hot and fresh from the spit, and the wine flows freely.

Afterward, replete, licking grease from his fingers, Thorin stretches back upon his bench and surveys the room. Many elves have departed already, or are lingering in the corners and shadows in gentle conversation. The Lady Evenstar herself is laughing, feeding some tidbit to Estel, who is laughing as well; the Lady’s brothers watch and smile and lean against one another’s shoulders.

Watching this tableau, Thorin forgets for a moment, and reaches with the wrong hand for his wineglass. In the moment it takes him to remember, he overcompensates for the reach, and turns his wine over into Thranduil’s lap.

For a moment, he feels the sick frustration of knowing that he is changed; then hot shame floods his face as he sees the mess, and knows that change has made him clumsy. He starts to apologize—

But Thranduil is laughing—quietly, so that his eyes are wrinkled at the corners and his lips are pursed together. Laughing with true humor, shaking his head gently, leaning forward over his trencher.

“Are you _laughing_ ,” demands Thorin in astonishment.

Thranduil dabs at the wine on his robe helplessly, still chuckling, and Thorin wonders if he should be offended; then he realizes that this is the first time he has ever seen Thranduil really laugh, and his heart opens like the wingspan of a bird. The sound soaks into him; the raw broken place in his spirit suddenly feel like furrows in dry earth, and the small ridiculous moment fills each crack with something liquid and lovely and whole. He could watch Thranduil laugh for eternity.

“You always did love pouring wine on me,” teases Thranduil, and his eyes catch Thorin’s, still crinkled from laughter, tender with regret and bright with the knowledge of hope.

Thorin knows it will only last for a moment, that the welling pressure beneath his breastbone will ebb, that he will doubt again. But he knows also that this feeling will come again, and over and over until it seems as natural as breathing, until the parched earth is sodden and the cracks are faint memories beneath the fallow clover, and for this moment he truly knows himself forgiven.

“Come on then,” says Thranduil, rising and holding out his hand, heedless of the dark stain of wine like a wound pouring from his heart. “Take me back to our chambers, and help me take off these ruined clothes.”

* * *

 

The last of the representatives have arrived. The Steward’s younger son is here, a dreamer with gray eyes; Gloin’s boy is here too, handsome and red-gold and courteous despite the temper Thorin knows he is hiding. The Lady Captain of Rohan and her small retinue have, by all rumor, been scandalizing half the valley with their songs. Gandalf himself is here, and Thorin has heard a dark whisper that he brings an even stranger companion: an orc-captain, a hero of Gundabad, to offer his help as a gesture of goodwill between the Mountains and the valley.

It is an impressive gathering, this Council of Arwen, and though it is meant to be secret, of course the whole of Imladris knows. The Balrog must be slain, and many nations have sent their best to help.

And now, looking down into the paved circle where the Lady Evenstar presides, taking in the draped figure at Gandalf’s side and the weighted glances between Legolas and Gimli, nodding to Glorfindel and the twins with a familiarity he would have thought repulsive in an earlier life—now Thorin feels Thranduil’s hand interlaced with his own, the weight of a good sword at his side, the absence of pain. Now he can smell the ash and the greenery together, and see each mote clearly, and capture at a glimpse the burdens of meaning and conflict that each nation’s representative bears for each other.

Now he feels like a king.

He had meant to attend this as a formality, as a purveyor of knowledge, as an eyewitness. But there is battle-song in the air, and he feels Thranduil’s fingers tense between his own, and he knows that when the company rides out hunting, he and his lover will ride out too.

He has rested long enough. He has atoned for his sins. He has risen to power and been cast down; he has been a monster and earned back his soul. He is scarred, battered, and damaged; but he is loved.

And he will fight back the ash, and cut through the smoke, and slay the demon, and see again the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story would not have been possible without a hell of a lot of people.
> 
> To the original prompter—you anonymous, disastrous, beautiful creature, I’m sure you had no idea where this would go when you asked for the story. The seed of this great vine is yours; I hope you have enjoyed it.
> 
> To vicka/werpiper—your lore-knowledge and insights helped me understand the entire arc of the Ring and the rings. You gave me SO MUCH amazing feedback and you asked really, truly useful questions. I can’t thank you enough.
> 
> To Wesley—not only did you grab my floundering hands and drag me in the direction of an actual, cohesive novel, you have been a true friend and an incredibly patient person as I’ve flopped around repeatedly in puddles of ignorance and shame. I adore you. I blow kisses at your beautiful face.
> 
> To dwarfsmut—your unswerving delight in this fandom, and your unashamed embrace of smut and romance and dwarven butt-touching, have been a true inspiration.
> 
> To Boris—let’s write a book about orcs. I will never get enough of your orcs. Thank you for orcs.
> 
> To Tess—you both challenged and encouraged me, and I still get excited when I see red text in a block of black text. Thank you. Bless you.
> 
> To Dafne—you jumped in at the last when I was exhausted and gave me feedback on a chapter that was killing me. I owe you.
> 
> To James—I hope to fuck you never read this, but I could never have done it without our weird silent writing dates. I’m so sorry that the part you DID read was a smutty bit. Thanks for letting me cry on you.
> 
> To Ronelle—it has been a pleasure and an honor to watch your writing grow over the years, and I look forward to seeing your name on a bookshelf someday. Don’t stop writing.
> 
> To Kevin—oh, my dear husband. God. I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of the things that happened to you over this book. I love you.
> 
> To April—remember me when you write your bestsellers and are too famous to travel without an armed escort. You are really something incredible. I’m glad to be your sister/agent of corruption.
> 
> To all of you—your comments, encouragement, and love have been the lifeblood that kept this story, and its author, alive. I wanted to give up a thousand times, and you reminded me again and again of what I love in these characters, and what I wanted for this story, and why I write.


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